Susanne Ackers

published: Pneuma Monoxyd, ISBN 978-3-938847-11

After addressing the time-based media of music and film, Köner once again turns consciously to the medium of photography, as a non time-based medium in his 13 photo works presented for the first time at the [plug.in] in Basel.

His works show urban views oriented around classic perspectives. These black-and-white views with endless quantities of gray tones reject the idea of colorfulness that characterizes images of current-day cities in their use of sandwich boards and neon or the kind of LED-illuminated advertising that is now popular.

One element heralded in the time-based media (e.g., in "Banlieue du Vide") is his work with film stills that, through scarcely perceptible transitions, are transformed into an – extremely slow – sequence of movements. This is now developed in his photographs where moving images have come to a standstill. Köner adds blurring, cross-fading and fuzziness to the digital photographs of urban landscapes and the people in them in a post-production process.

In this way, the issue of time is broached in the stills, with a story developing gradually over time or the overlapping of several stories becoming visible at a glance. In the acoustic domain, a corresponding reduction occurs. Whereas his video works are accompanied by a reduced and decelerated noise background, now, in the medium of photography, the soundtrack is completely missing and the viewer is surrounded by silence.

At the beginning of the 20^{th century, art historian Erwin Panofsky interpreted the central perspective as a symbolic form of the Renaissance worldview. A process of rejecting the "blurred" quality of human vision (perspectiva naturalis) in favor of the purpose-driven concept of a finite mathematical pictorial space in which every point is defined (perspectiva artificialis).}

^{Since then, this clear way of looking at things with its focus on central perspective has influenced perception, not only through the use of this symbolic form in painting, but more, through the inherent existence of this symbolic form in every image of reality produced using photographic or filmic technology with the result that today our understanding of reality is often equated with purpose-driven, clearly-defined representation. However, as phenomenology studied a number of decades after the publication of Panofsky’s article, the perspectiva naturalis is a part of human perception that should not be neglected: "In normal vision, on the other hand, I direct my gaze upon a sector of the landscape, which comes to life and is disclosed, while the other objects recede into the periphery and become dormant, while, however, not ceasing to be there," writes Merleau-Ponty.}

Köner’s pictorial spaces – both the moving and the stationary ones – cannot be subordinated to the classic definition of the central perspective-oriented pictorial space as a mathematically closed space. In them, many points have more than one definition, or at least so it seems. The central perspective has been abolished. There is no goal, no plan. By contrast, one moment flares up with much overlapping and many dimensions. This instant is substantial, full of significance, without a clear spatial point of reference, without an objective, without time, with people who stand for stories. Köner assembles the blurred, smudged things in our environments that have become pushed to the side and, in his works, he stages them, draws them into the picture, to the center of our attention. He paints digital pictures of a concentrated perception.

He paints a standstill in the maelstrom of our fast-moving times. The standstill in the asymptotic journeys between the parallels that admittedly only meet at the vanishing point of central perspective in the pictorial space of painting and photography, but that represent infinity as a mathematical construction. Four years after Panofsky, Walter Benjamin compared the painter’s tools with those of a violinist, stating that both are free in their respective choice of color and sound and that they constantly re-produce the latter. At the same time, as he sees it, both the photographer and the piano player are bound by the laws inherent to their instruments. The application of art presupposes knowledge of these rules, in order subsequently to be able to test and to transgress these boundaries. The advent of digital media has blurred the distinctions that could still be made at the beginning of the 20th century. The media artist who produces an image of reality based upon the perspectiva artificialis using a digital camera and following the laws of central perspective can, in a post-production process, change the resulting picture at will.

The asymptote stretching out into infinity as a development of the symbolic form of central perspective does not make an appearance in its temporal dimension until the age of the computer and of digital data processing. Rendering movement visible by means of the figure of the asymptote results in a continuous shifting of foreground, middle ground and background. In Köner’s pictures there is no recognizable goal and, consequently, no approach to the latter. Instead, there is an effect that is only tangible in terms of time.

As we approach, the abstract goal, the vanishing point, does not get any closer, but moves backwards.

Köner concentrates this figure of infinity into a moment. He halts the flow of time – in his videos, by means of deceleration and cross-fading, in his photos by manipulating the center of the image, the place where, if rules were followed, the vanishing point of central perspective would be located. The viewer initially notices that the pull exerted by the picture has been arrested and begins to examine the content of the pictorial space.

In the picture Knez Mihailova something in the middle of the background seems to explode: The target point is blurred and not recognizable. In the picture "Trg", both the center of the picture and the horizon are blurred. Although the photographs remain recognizable as images of reality they escape the documentary character of the medium by means of their blurred quality and their reduction in the details. Unlike the documentary image of a moment that is clear and static with a central perspective, they possess complex dynamics.

The closing scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey begins with a flight into the depths of the picture, towards a vanishing point in infinity. Using the video technology resources available at the time the movement from the foreground into the depths is illustrated by grid-like lines that fall away from the foreground of the picture and continue ever further into the center of the picture. This pull into space is still in evidence today in the aesthetics of a large number of computer and video games. Our gaze – and thus our understanding of the world – sees the physical world extended into the pictorial space of the non-material. The movement is into the picture and towards infinity.

In the 15th century, this movement of the gaze into space was interpreted exactly the other way around. The Dominican order commissioned Leonardo da Vinci with a wall fresco for the refectory in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. This well-known Last Supper fresco also continues the central-perspective vanishing point of the pictorial space into infinity just past Jesus’s slightly bowed head. However, at the time, this was seen as a symbol of an opening to the kingdom of God which, so to speak, from Infinity and through the person of Christ, actively exerted its charisma on and was permanently illustrated for the monks who gathered in the refectory several times a day. The secular, material reality of the late 15th century – as exemplified by the refectory – was enriched by the charisma from the divine sphere. The pictorial space and the central perspective served the Dominican order as an illustration of the movement from infinity to reality.

Köner arrests the process of vanishing into the pictorial space with his photographic works, allowing for a moment’s pause to perceive what then remains.

 He shows that the goal aimed at is blurred, out of focus, not existent, if not constantly redefined. The moment becomes the compressed time of an instant. The existence of mankind is not located in the permanently developing technology of modern art but in a growing awareness of the complexity and quality of the unfocused dynamics of intricacy.

Susanne Ackers

published: Pneuma Monoxyd, ISBN 978-3-938847-11

After addressing the time-based media of music and film, Köner once again turns consciously to the medium of photography, as a non time-based medium in his 13 photo works presented for the first time at the [plug.in] in Basel.

His works show urban views oriented around classic perspectives. These black-and-white views with endless quantities of gray tones reject the idea of colorfulness that characterizes images of current-day cities in their use of sandwich boards and neon or the kind of LED-illuminated advertising that is now popular.

One element heralded in the time-based media (e.g., in "Banlieue du Vide") is his work with film stills that, through scarcely perceptible transitions, are transformed into an – extremely slow – sequence of movements. This is now developed in his photographs where moving images have come to a standstill. Köner adds blurring, cross-fading and fuzziness to the digital photographs of urban landscapes and the people in them in a post-production process.

In this way, the issue of time is broached in the stills, with a story developing gradually over time or the overlapping of several stories becoming visible at a glance. In the acoustic domain, a corresponding reduction occurs. Whereas his video works are accompanied by a reduced and decelerated noise background, now, in the medium of photography, the soundtrack is completely missing and the viewer is surrounded by silence.

At the beginning of the 20^{th century, art historian Erwin Panofsky interpreted the central perspective as a symbolic form of the Renaissance worldview. A process of rejecting the "blurred" quality of human vision (perspectiva naturalis) in favor of the purpose-driven concept of a finite mathematical pictorial space in which every point is defined (perspectiva artificialis).}

^{Since then, this clear way of looking at things with its focus on central perspective has influenced perception, not only through the use of this symbolic form in painting, but more, through the inherent existence of this symbolic form in every image of reality produced using photographic or filmic technology with the result that today our understanding of reality is often equated with purpose-driven, clearly-defined representation. However, as phenomenology studied a number of decades after the publication of Panofsky’s article, the perspectiva naturalis is a part of human perception that should not be neglected: "In normal vision, on the other hand, I direct my gaze upon a sector of the landscape, which comes to life and is disclosed, while the other objects recede into the periphery and become dormant, while, however, not ceasing to be there," writes Merleau-Ponty.}

Köner’s pictorial spaces – both the moving and the stationary ones – cannot be subordinated to the classic definition of the central perspective-oriented pictorial space as a mathematically closed space. In them, many points have more than one definition, or at least so it seems. The central perspective has been abolished. There is no goal, no plan. By contrast, one moment flares up with much overlapping and many dimensions. This instant is substantial, full of significance, without a clear spatial point of reference, without an objective, without time, with people who stand for stories. Köner assembles the blurred, smudged things in our environments that have become pushed to the side and, in his works, he stages them, draws them into the picture, to the center of our attention. He paints digital pictures of a concentrated perception.

He paints a standstill in the maelstrom of our fast-moving times. The standstill in the asymptotic journeys between the parallels that admittedly only meet at the vanishing point of central perspective in the pictorial space of painting and photography, but that represent infinity as a mathematical construction. Four years after Panofsky, Walter Benjamin compared the painter’s tools with those of a violinist, stating that both are free in their respective choice of color and sound and that they constantly re-produce the latter. At the same time, as he sees it, both the photographer and the piano player are bound by the laws inherent to their instruments. The application of art presupposes knowledge of these rules, in order subsequently to be able to test and to transgress these boundaries. The advent of digital media has blurred the distinctions that could still be made at the beginning of the 20th century. The media artist who produces an image of reality based upon the perspectiva artificialis using a digital camera and following the laws of central perspective can, in a post-production process, change the resulting picture at will.

The asymptote stretching out into infinity as a development of the symbolic form of central perspective does not make an appearance in its temporal dimension until the age of the computer and of digital data processing. Rendering movement visible by means of the figure of the asymptote results in a continuous shifting of foreground, middle ground and background. In Köner’s pictures there is no recognizable goal and, consequently, no approach to the latter. Instead, there is an effect that is only tangible in terms of time.

As we approach, the abstract goal, the vanishing point, does not get any closer, but moves backwards.

Köner concentrates this figure of infinity into a moment. He halts the flow of time – in his videos, by means of deceleration and cross-fading, in his photos by manipulating the center of the image, the place where, if rules were followed, the vanishing point of central perspective would be located. The viewer initially notices that the pull exerted by the picture has been arrested and begins to examine the content of the pictorial space.

In the picture Knez Mihailova something in the middle of the background seems to explode: The target point is blurred and not recognizable. In the picture "Trg", both the center of the picture and the horizon are blurred. Although the photographs remain recognizable as images of reality they escape the documentary character of the medium by means of their blurred quality and their reduction in the details. Unlike the documentary image of a moment that is clear and static with a central perspective, they possess complex dynamics.

The closing scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey begins with a flight into the depths of the picture, towards a vanishing point in infinity. Using the video technology resources available at the time the movement from the foreground into the depths is illustrated by grid-like lines that fall away from the foreground of the picture and continue ever further into the center of the picture. This pull into space is still in evidence today in the aesthetics of a large number of computer and video games. Our gaze – and thus our understanding of the world – sees the physical world extended into the pictorial space of the non-material. The movement is into the picture and towards infinity.

In the 15th century, this movement of the gaze into space was interpreted exactly the other way around. The Dominican order commissioned Leonardo da Vinci with a wall fresco for the refectory in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. This well-known Last Supper fresco also continues the central-perspective vanishing point of the pictorial space into infinity just past Jesus’s slightly bowed head. However, at the time, this was seen as a symbol of an opening to the kingdom of God which, so to speak, from Infinity and through the person of Christ, actively exerted its charisma on and was permanently illustrated for the monks who gathered in the refectory several times a day. The secular, material reality of the late 15th century – as exemplified by the refectory – was enriched by the charisma from the divine sphere. The pictorial space and the central perspective served the Dominican order as an illustration of the movement from infinity to reality.

Köner arrests the process of vanishing into the pictorial space with his photographic works, allowing for a moment’s pause to perceive what then remains.

 He shows that the goal aimed at is blurred, out of focus, not existent, if not constantly redefined. The moment becomes the compressed time of an instant. The existence of mankind is not located in the permanently developing technology of modern art but in a growing awareness of the complexity and quality of the unfocused dynamics of intricacy.