When the Post Office Showed me the World
2023
»It took me a long time to realize what our project ALTE POST WIEN means to me.«
In the following text, SHA. was able to reflect on some things and make new connections. For this, however, he had to dig deep not only on the outside - in the soil of the construction site, so to speak - but also inside the person - the artist.
In the course of our research work for this major project, we had already dug a lot and dug deep - archaeologically, historically, sociologically and also symbolically deep. In doing so, we had answered the big questions: What does the city, the district, the Grätzel, the building tell us? The only question that could not be answered satisfactorily was what the 150 years of use as a post office tells us about this area. In the end, these were rather ironic, perhaps even cynical statements that were to find their way into the basic concept of the building and were also presented to the public in the context of an exhibition.
Today - almost five years after the first research work - it has only really become clear to me.
To do this, I not only had to dig deep on the outside, but also within myself as an artist. At first, I was convinced that the term "post" meant nothing to me. I didn't see any personal connection to the subject, and certainly not to "Alte Post". It seemed pointless, not current, and frankly almost irrelevant in our digital age.
Now - closer and closer to completion - a gate has suddenly opened and I now also know about the deep personal meaning of this project:
As a child, I grew up in a small village in Styria, in the middle of nature. Travel was not part of my childhood. But every time the "postman" brought a postcard, a new universe opened up for me. The always interesting and fascinating postcard motifs showed me the big world, they imprinted a deep sense of longing in me to go out into the world to discover it. And that is what I did later as an adult - in my private life as well as in my professional life.
The postcards were all collected on a huge wooden wall at our home. Yes, to this day there is this wall in Styria, where sometimes three, four, five layers of postcards are fixed with thumbtacks and collaged on top of each other ... When I began my own travels, I was very proud to be able to send a postcard home from each trip. So many of my own and other people's postcards have accumulated ... in this archive of unconscious memories.
While pondering these postcard motifs, I now noticed another aspect that became especially artistically formative for me as a person growing up:
The post was not only the bearer of world images. The postcards were also synaesthetic sources of inspiration. While studying these motifs closely, the world images began to sound - in me - to smell, to move ... As if by itself, the power of imagination activated all senses. I could hear the water rushing, see the seagulls flying and feel the spray on my skin. So not only did the Post contribute to my desire to see and discover the world for myself, but also to proactively and creatively shape the world. This became the primal motive and drive of the rest of my life.
Full of humility, I want to apologize to the "Post" today - that I initially underestimated it in its importance and needed a lot of time to recognize the deeper meaning for me.
Now we are close to the completion of an extraordinary, large-scale media artwork in the "Alte Post". Just in time, I was able to open my eyes and properly clock the development processes for the content of this work. Today, with the help of an AI artificial intelligence, we are able to create high-resolution spatial postcard motifs in an infinite wealth of variations, all of which are ultimately based on a few basic motifs that shaped my desires and talents as a child.
The AI that supports us in this artwork is radically subjectivized in its hour of birth. It is fed with images that come from my own memories, from my artist's image archive, so to speak. This is how we teach the AI a "character" and an "aesthetic," namely, what I as a creative person (as the creator/inventor of this new work of art) consider aesthetic and thus precious. These are indeed photos from the archive of my own life. But these are also photos I've never taken, but that I dream about - and search for online in the digital image jungle. And these are also iconic images that have inscribed themselves in my consciousness from media, movies, websites and social media.
We send the ever newly generated postcard motifs from the digital world back into the analog world, where their sources of inspiration originally came from, by projecting them spatially 360° onto the historic Dominican Courtyard of the Old Post Office. By studying the motifs closely, the world images will then slowly begin to ... to sound ... to smell ... vibrate ... to move ... and to change ... You will trans-form.
Synesthesia as an experience.
Space as an interface of different times.
A "wormhole" for the journey between realities.
#thankyoupostoffice
#altepostgoesfuture
#newartintheoldpostoffice
© SHA. 2023
