X Capitals
X Capitals
X Capitals

X Capitals

Enrichment through foreign influences
A photography and sound art project
in 21 motifs in 18 cities
by Henry Landers

The 21 motif descriptions are imperative theses in Sloterdijk's sense of vertical tension, which are simultaneously posed as topical questions.

The cities selected for the project are by no means only capital cities, as the title might suggest. Rather, it is about the playful interpretation of the English term in its two levels of meaning. This refers to cities that are supported like a capital by the pillars of their region. Photographs: the exhibitions feature large-format scroll paintings. The flexible material is reminiscent of the fabric of nomadic and oriental peoples. The scroll paintings are therefore an ideal trans-Mediterranean bridge between the people of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Material of the scroll pictures:
Pigment print, wood, black and white images, patterns, paper roll, silk ribbon

Photography technology ...»»

X CAPITALS read more about the idea ...»»

The conceptual art series X Capitals takes up global urban dynamics and reflects them in a discourse on values such as democracy, freedom, education, religion, and family. ‘X Capitas’ is an expedition searching for a new continent in the realm of perception, and at the same time it is a global sociological field study in the urban habitat of the last surviving population of Homo sapiens. The basic concept and exhibition concept of X Capitals is a constant, the common thread that ties together all the projects in this series. The project title is two-part. X Capitals defines the constant of 22 motifs using a special black-and-white photography technique, the traditional Japanese-style roll image technique adapted for the project, and the three-part supporting philosophy. Three projects were created in the conceptual art series, in which a total of 18 cities worldwide participated.

1. Project: X Capitals Berlin (Berlin's partner cities): Beijing, Berlin, Jakarta, Paris, and Tokyo. 2. Project: X Capitals Europe (EU members): Berlin, Budapest, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Nicosia, Riga, Tallinn, Valletta, Warsaw and Vienna. X Capitals Europe was shown as a guest exhibition in March 2008 in a spectacular exhibition in the atrium of the Foreign Office in Berlin. 3. Project: X Capitals Exit: Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Ramallah, Damascus, Amman

Furthermore, X Capitals is not just a series of city portraits in the usual sense. Behind the photographs lie the three philosophical levels mentioned above, which provide complex and novel approaches to working with the medium of photography. The first level: the photographic technique is inspired by a discipline in elementary physics, superstring (M) theory. Among other things, this reflects the metaphor of a discrete state of emerging reality, which has an 11-dimensional ‘graininess,’ similar to a mosaic from which an image emerges as the distance increases. This is also the matrix in my pictures, from which an unfinished reality and, as I see it, a premonition of the future is depicted in photography. ◊ The second level: The exhibition design is quasi a counter-image to the Babylonian parable and aims to unite many cultures and languages at one point. ◊ The third level seeks knowledge, the new. It is reflected in the ideas of Leon Eisenberg (Harvard Medical School), who describes the social construction of neural structures in the human brain. The X Capitals concept is a kind of tool for establishing intercultural, social relationships to make them visible and emotionally accessible to the viewer in exhibitions. X Capitals reflects the unstable pair of sensually satisfying and individual attractions: war and peace on different psychological and social levels. With X Capitals, I attempt to enrich the unfulfilled pair with a third stabilizing position of perception, which I call The Third Correspondence. Jean-Jacques Arnaud's film Am Anfang war das Feuer (In the Beginning was Fire) vividly depicts a similar path to finding a new sensual attraction, which largely inspired me to create the X Capitals project series. About ‘The Third Correspondence’: After nearly 10 years of working on the subject, there is so much to say about The Third Correspondence. It is connected to the cultivation of emotions, similar to what we know from language, which grows to its highest form over many phases of life and forms of expression.

Level 1: THE EXHIBITION CONCEPT

The alleys that visitors encounter in the exhibition are arranged in two rows, one above the other, approximately five meters high and 12 meters long. I recently visited Mdina, a very well-preserved medieval Christian town in Malta. In the narrow alleys, I experienced the same effect that I was looking for in the presentation of the pictures. Like windows, the pictures offer a view into distant, nearby worlds. In the houses of the old narrow alleys, windows in two rows above each other revealed or concealed the view. When they revealed what was hidden behind them, passers-by encountered rooms, families, destinies, lifestyles, and, ultimately, the intimate private sphere of individuals. In the same way, as a passerby, as a visitor, and at the same time as part of the whole, the viewer of the X Capitals exhibition can encounter different cultures, religions, and nationalities. The 22 motifs reflect this diversity and will each be hung in rows next to each other. These are the 10 mayors side by side, the symbols of freedom, the traditional weddings .... . In this way, visitors to the exhibition can see their hometown in the context of the other cities portrayed and discover familiar and new things in the other. The translingual nature of image and sound helps to effortlessly overcome language barriers. Unlike similar topics covered by media such as TV and newspapers, X Capitals focuses on the simultaneity, continuous presence, and coexistence of topics.

Level 2: IMAGING TECHNOLOGY

It is a special black-and-white imaging technique that I developed myself. One aspect of it is reduction. It allows me to free myself from technical ballast as much as possible and to find a more direct connection to the photographed reality. My camera equipment consists of a manual Nikon FA, a 24mm lens, and a highly sensitive black-and-white film, which allows me to work exclusively with authentic light. In an intermediate step, an original photograph is created on special paper, filtered during enlargement, and with specially adjusted development and exposure values. My style of photography is most effective where it creates an impression of transcendence. Light penetrates the black from the depths, just as water penetrates a sponge from below and creates an image on its surface.

The analog photographs become scrolls.
The images are framed with patterned borders specially developed for the 22 series, which are printed directly onto the carrier medium as fine art prints together with the image. I use my HL logo as a universal design element. The colors and shapes are inspired by manga aesthetics, pop art, and antique influences. The photograph is now transformed into flowing foil. Patterns, plastic, ink, stabilizing wood, and the cardboard roll give the image a three-dimensional, open material and form structure. It reveals the photograph and gives the image a flowing, intimate impression that is defenselessly exposed to the world and its events. The flowing structure and informal materiality of nomadic cultures are reflected in the roll images.

The grain is another aspect of the technique, which, like a matrix, gives the emerging forms their initial shape as an unfinished surface. Grain combines content and aesthetic functionality with the aim of questioning our experienced everyday reality. I base this on my perhaps daring thesis about reality. I assume that reality is a pulsating phenomenon. Described in very simplified terms, each impulse creates a new sequence of reality. It reaches its point of highest perfection and then passes, followed by a new sequence of reality, and so on. I found inspiration and a scientific basis for these thoughts in superstring theory and the concept of 11-dimensional space manifolds. In my pictures, I seek to photograph the moment when the previous impulse of reality has passed and the newly emerging form is not yet fully formulated. Surfaces are not yet closed, sharpness is not yet complete, colors are yet to develop, and it seems as if the gaze is still free to look behind the mask of reality. I am searching for a glimpse of what the coming, maturing reality might look like. In my photographs, I seek to make visible a premonition of the future.
X Capitals
Enrichment through foreign influences
A photography and sound art project
in 21 motifs in 18 cities
by Henry Landers

The 21 motif descriptions are imperative theses in Sloterdijk's sense of vertical tension, which are simultaneously posed as topical questions.

The cities selected for the project are by no means only capital cities, as the title might suggest. Rather, it is about the playful interpretation of the English term in its two levels of meaning. This refers to cities that are supported like a capital by the pillars of their region. Photographs: the exhibitions feature large-format scroll paintings. The flexible material is reminiscent of the fabric of nomadic and oriental peoples. The scroll paintings are therefore an ideal trans-Mediterranean bridge between the people of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Material of the scroll pictures:
Pigment print, wood, black and white images, patterns, paper roll, silk ribbon

Photography technology ...»»

X CAPITALS read more about the idea ...»»

The conceptual art series X Capitals takes up global urban dynamics and reflects them in a discourse on values such as democracy, freedom, education, religion, and family. ‘X Capitas’ is an expedition searching for a new continent in the realm of perception, and at the same time it is a global sociological field study in the urban habitat of the last surviving population of Homo sapiens. The basic concept and exhibition concept of X Capitals is a constant, the common thread that ties together all the projects in this series. The project title is two-part. X Capitals defines the constant of 22 motifs using a special black-and-white photography technique, the traditional Japanese-style roll image technique adapted for the project, and the three-part supporting philosophy. Three projects were created in the conceptual art series, in which a total of 18 cities worldwide participated.

1. Project: X Capitals Berlin (Berlin's partner cities): Beijing, Berlin, Jakarta, Paris, and Tokyo. 2. Project: X Capitals Europe (EU members): Berlin, Budapest, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Nicosia, Riga, Tallinn, Valletta, Warsaw and Vienna. X Capitals Europe was shown as a guest exhibition in March 2008 in a spectacular exhibition in the atrium of the Foreign Office in Berlin. 3. Project: X Capitals Exit: Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Ramallah, Damascus, Amman

Furthermore, X Capitals is not just a series of city portraits in the usual sense. Behind the photographs lie the three philosophical levels mentioned above, which provide complex and novel approaches to working with the medium of photography. The first level: the photographic technique is inspired by a discipline in elementary physics, superstring (M) theory. Among other things, this reflects the metaphor of a discrete state of emerging reality, which has an 11-dimensional ‘graininess,’ similar to a mosaic from which an image emerges as the distance increases. This is also the matrix in my pictures, from which an unfinished reality and, as I see it, a premonition of the future is depicted in photography. ◊ The second level: The exhibition design is quasi a counter-image to the Babylonian parable and aims to unite many cultures and languages at one point. ◊ The third level seeks knowledge, the new. It is reflected in the ideas of Leon Eisenberg (Harvard Medical School), who describes the social construction of neural structures in the human brain. The X Capitals concept is a kind of tool for establishing intercultural, social relationships to make them visible and emotionally accessible to the viewer in exhibitions. X Capitals reflects the unstable pair of sensually satisfying and individual attractions: war and peace on different psychological and social levels. With X Capitals, I attempt to enrich the unfulfilled pair with a third stabilizing position of perception, which I call The Third Correspondence. Jean-Jacques Arnaud's film Am Anfang war das Feuer (In the Beginning was Fire) vividly depicts a similar path to finding a new sensual attraction, which largely inspired me to create the X Capitals project series. About ‘The Third Correspondence’: After nearly 10 years of working on the subject, there is so much to say about The Third Correspondence. It is connected to the cultivation of emotions, similar to what we know from language, which grows to its highest form over many phases of life and forms of expression.

Level 1: THE EXHIBITION CONCEPT

The alleys that visitors encounter in the exhibition are arranged in two rows, one above the other, approximately five meters high and 12 meters long. I recently visited Mdina, a very well-preserved medieval Christian town in Malta. In the narrow alleys, I experienced the same effect that I was looking for in the presentation of the pictures. Like windows, the pictures offer a view into distant, nearby worlds. In the houses of the old narrow alleys, windows in two rows above each other revealed or concealed the view. When they revealed what was hidden behind them, passers-by encountered rooms, families, destinies, lifestyles, and, ultimately, the intimate private sphere of individuals. In the same way, as a passerby, as a visitor, and at the same time as part of the whole, the viewer of the X Capitals exhibition can encounter different cultures, religions, and nationalities. The 22 motifs reflect this diversity and will each be hung in rows next to each other. These are the 10 mayors side by side, the symbols of freedom, the traditional weddings .... . In this way, visitors to the exhibition can see their hometown in the context of the other cities portrayed and discover familiar and new things in the other. The translingual nature of image and sound helps to effortlessly overcome language barriers. Unlike similar topics covered by media such as TV and newspapers, X Capitals focuses on the simultaneity, continuous presence, and coexistence of topics.

Level 2: IMAGING TECHNOLOGY

It is a special black-and-white imaging technique that I developed myself. One aspect of it is reduction. It allows me to free myself from technical ballast as much as possible and to find a more direct connection to the photographed reality. My camera equipment consists of a manual Nikon FA, a 24mm lens, and a highly sensitive black-and-white film, which allows me to work exclusively with authentic light. In an intermediate step, an original photograph is created on special paper, filtered during enlargement, and with specially adjusted development and exposure values. My style of photography is most effective where it creates an impression of transcendence. Light penetrates the black from the depths, just as water penetrates a sponge from below and creates an image on its surface.

The analog photographs become scrolls.
The images are framed with patterned borders specially developed for the 22 series, which are printed directly onto the carrier medium as fine art prints together with the image. I use my HL logo as a universal design element. The colors and shapes are inspired by manga aesthetics, pop art, and antique influences. The photograph is now transformed into flowing foil. Patterns, plastic, ink, stabilizing wood, and the cardboard roll give the image a three-dimensional, open material and form structure. It reveals the photograph and gives the image a flowing, intimate impression that is defenselessly exposed to the world and its events. The flowing structure and informal materiality of nomadic cultures are reflected in the roll images.

The grain is another aspect of the technique, which, like a matrix, gives the emerging forms their initial shape as an unfinished surface. Grain combines content and aesthetic functionality with the aim of questioning our experienced everyday reality. I base this on my perhaps daring thesis about reality. I assume that reality is a pulsating phenomenon. Described in very simplified terms, each impulse creates a new sequence of reality. It reaches its point of highest perfection and then passes, followed by a new sequence of reality, and so on. I found inspiration and a scientific basis for these thoughts in superstring theory and the concept of 11-dimensional space manifolds. In my pictures, I seek to photograph the moment when the previous impulse of reality has passed and the newly emerging form is not yet fully formulated. Surfaces are not yet closed, sharpness is not yet complete, colors are yet to develop, and it seems as if the gaze is still free to look behind the mask of reality. I am searching for a glimpse of what the coming, maturing reality might look like. In my photographs, I seek to make visible a premonition of the future.


Henry Landers Fotografie Serie Titel X Capitals - Muster für 22 Rollbild-Serien X Capitals

Muster für 22 Rollbild-Serien
2007 bis 2008