BERLIN BIENNALE

Berlin, Germany

“8th Berlin Biennale”, 29.5.2014 – 3.8.2014

https://www.berlinbiennale.de/en/personen/75/patrick-alan-banfield

Photo: Anders Sune Berg

Installation view of "yvLö:t" at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin

vyLö:t, 2012
HD video, 2-channel installation, color, sound, 16′09″
Courtesy Patrick Alan Banfield

Technical installation setupEIDOTECH
PrevisualizationNicolas C. Geissler
Special thanks to Isaac Julien

Stills

Photo: Patrick Alan Banfield

Patrick Alan Banfield’s works often situate time-based media such as video within spatial installations. Making use of live-editing processes as well as sound composition, much of his work engages with the socialization of “nature” and the poetic of identity. At the 8th Berlin Biennale, Banfield shows the two-channel video and audio installation vyLö:t (2012) in which the struggle between human desire, the laws of nature, and the built environment is brought to the fore. On one screen, long-tracking shots of post-war concrete housing blocks highlight rigid architectural forms and somewhat menacing façades. Shot in Karlsruhe and Heidelberg, these views seem to underline the anonymity and isolation of urban life. By contrast, the other screen shows images shot in the Taunus, a mountain range in Hesse, north of Frankfurt. Here the chaos of organic forms -tree stumps, ragged rocks, wet soil and gnarled, exposed roots- seems to present the polar opposite of the cityscape; a vision of wild nature untouched and unencumbered by the demands of man, which brings to mind the German Romanticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But at time the shots on both screens seem to merge, following the principle of camouflage, and thereby call into question any easy dichotomy between the built and the natural environment. The video is accompanied by a poetic soundscape (a collaboration with Sascha Blank), adding another atmospheric layer to the installation.

Text by Juan A. Gaitán

Exhibition views

Patrick Alan Banfield on Universes in Universe

Visitors watch the video installation by Patrick Alan Banfield at Haus am Waldsee on Getty Images


Press release

8. BERLIN BIENNALE FÜR ZEITGENÖSSISCHE KUNST on Kulturstiftung des Bundes


Press coverage

Biennale di Berlino 2014 on DOPPIOZERO

8TH BERLIN BIENNALE: FOR CONNECTING TO HISTORY AND FUTURE on pARTisan mag

Review: Berlin Biennale 8 on Rhea Boyden

BERLIN BIENNALE 8 on The Miami Rail

»GEOPOIESIS« BEI DER BERLIN BIENNALE IM HAUS AM WALDSEE on ZAFRAAN ENSEMBLE

Das Haus am Waldsee zur Berlin-Biennale: Posen und Podeste on TAGESSPIEGEL

Exhibition // Berlin Biennale at Haus am Waldsee on Berlin Art Link