Artists' Film Club: Armin Linke

Alpi (2011) is the result of seven years of research on contemporary perceptions of the landscape of the Alps, juxtaposing places and situations across all eight bordering nations and spanning the territories of four languages. In the film, the Alps are encountered like an island that is connected to various global transformations. We undertook many journeys in the alpine region, which, ironically, led us as far as Dubai. The film shows the Alps as a key location, owing to its delicacy and environmental importance, where one can observe and study the complexity of social, economic, and political relationships. In the Europe of today, the Alps are a hotbed for modernity and its illusions. (Armin Linke)

Alpi, 2011, HD video, colour, sound, 62 min

Armin Linke (born 1966. Lives and works in Milan and Berlin). As a photographer and filmmaker, he combines a range of contemporary image-processing technologies in order to blur the borders between fiction and reality. His artistic practice is concerned with different possibilities of dealing with photographic archives and their respective manifestations, as well as with the interrelations and transformative powers between urban, architectural or spatial functions and the human beings interacting with these environments.

Through work with his own archive, as well as with other historical archives, Linke challenges the conventions of photographic practice, whereby the questions of how photography is installed and displayed become increasingly important. When the artist takes over the role of an exhibition maker in a collective approach, together with artists, designers, architects, historians and curators, narratives are procured on the level of multiple discourses. He is currently professor at the HfG Karlsruhe.