post-title Christoph Keller | Future Archeologists | Esther Schipper | 08.06.-06.07.2023

Christoph Keller | Future Archeologists | Esther Schipper | 08.06.-06.07.2023

Christoph Keller | Future Archeologists | Esther Schipper | 08.06.-06.07.2023

Christoph Keller | Future Archeologists | Esther Schipper | 08.06.-06.07.2023

until 06.07. | #3943ARTatBerlin | Galerie Esther Schipper presents from 8. June 2023 the exhibition Future Archeologists of artist Christoph Keller. 

With Future Archeologists, Christoph Keller revisits the themes of his own past as a trained hydrologist. The three-channel video installation is an artistic survey of the environmental conditions in the Owens Valley in the eastern Sierra Nevada in California. The starting point and formal centre of Keller’s video installation are three cinematic perspectives shot over the vast landscape of the now dried-up Owens Lake.

ART at Berlin - Esther Schipper - Christoph Keller - Andrea RossettiChristoph Keller, Future Archeologists, 2023, 3-channel HD video installation (color, sound) Dimensions variable, 3 Screens: 96 x 167,6 x 5,8 cm each Duration: 34:19 min (each video), Exhibition view: Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2023, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul, © The artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023 Photo © Andrea Rossetti

The Owens Valley and the area around the lake were once a thriving landscape where the indigenous people, the Paiute, maintained complex irrigation systems. In 1913, an aqueduct was built to supply the city of Los Angeles, diverting the Owens Valley water and drying up the lake in just 15 years. Subsequently, the area became notorious as a source of toxic dust pollution. In the early 2000s, an extensive landscape modification programme was launched in some parts of the former lakebed to curb the build-up of toxic dust clouds that could travel as far as Los Angeles. This “Dust Mitigation Project” is the focus of Keller’s cinematic investigation.

ART at Berlin - Esther Schipper - Christoph Keller - Andrea Rossetti 1Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, 2023, 3-channel HD video installation (color, sound) Dimensions variable, 3 Screens: 96 x 167,6 x 5,8 cm each Duration: 34:19 min (each video), Exhibition view: Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2023, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul, © The artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023 Photo © Andrea Rossetti

Keller’s three-channel video installation shows the landscape of Owens Lake from the air. The video on the right channel moves in spiralling paths across the landscape, the middle video incessantly follows the main supply road of the Dust Mitigation Project, while the footage on the right channel moves in steady motions towards the centre of the former lake, with unsettling image, film still: Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, 2023, three-channel 4K HD video installation, measures variably beautiful vistas of the mountainous terrain surrounding the plain of the dry lake. As the camera travels through the mesmerising landscape, we hear a conversation between Keller and a geologist, accompanied by a constant, digitally generated glissando music, carefully calibrated to create a blend of aesthetic distance and dystopian realism. The images of ecological devastation are subtly heightened by the dialogue, which reveals the breathtaking hopelessness of a monumental industrialised process designed to control and contain the effects of massive environmental destruction for all time to come.

ART at Berlin - Esther Schipper - Christoph Keller - Andrea Rossetti 2Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, 2023, 3-channel HD video installation (color, sound) Dimensions variable, 3 Screens: 96 x 167,6 x 5,8 cm each Duration: 34:19 min (each video), Exhibition view: Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2023, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul, © The artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023 Photo © Andrea Rossetti

Keller’s work refers specifically to a dialectical aggregate of the most diverse references: literary and pictorial representations, science and science fiction, colonial history and local politics, timelessness and temporality of the landscape.

Christoph Keller engages with the history of science, the ways in which knowledge is collected and organised, and how this order in turn influences our thinking. For Future Archeologists, the artist’s training in hydrology provides the subtext for Keller’s continued exploration of specific areas of scientific enquiry, their consequences in broader cultural and philosophical contexts, and the impact such discourses can have on real life.

ART at Berlin - Esther Schipper - Christoph Keller - Andrea Rossetti 3Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, 2023, 3-channel HD video installation (color, sound) Dimensions variable, 3 Screens: 96 x 167,6 x 5,8 cm each Duration: 34:19 min (each video), Exhibition view: Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2023, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul, © The artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023 Photo © Andrea Rossetti

The video material for the project was filmed during Christoph Keller’s fellowship at the Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, in 2019. The artist would like to thank Claudia Gordon and Friedel Schmoranzer as well as the Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e. V. for their support.

Christoph Keller was born in Freiburg, Germany, in 1967. The artist lives and works in Berlin. Christoph Keller studied mathematics, physics and hydrology in Freiburg, Berlin and Santiago de Chile, completed a degree in liberal arts at the Berlin University of the Arts (with Katharina Sieverding) and attended the postgraduate course in film and art at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. He has received numerous prizes and grants for his work, including the Berlin Artistic Research Fellowship 2020/2021, the “Rome Prize” of the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome 2017, the Capacete Residency São Paulo 2012, the Berlin Senate Residency in Istanbul 2008, the Goethe-Institut Project Residency in Mexico City 2009, the Bremen Prize for Video Art 2006, the P.S.1 Residency Program in New York 2002 and the Ars Viva Art Award 2000.

ART at Berlin - Esther Schipper - Christoph Keller - Andrea Rossetti 4Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, 2023, 3-channel HD video installation (color, sound) Dimensions variable, 3 Screens: 96 x 167,6 x 5,8 cm each Duration: 34:19 min (each video), Exhibition view: Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2023, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul, © The artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023 Photo © Andrea Rossetti

Keller’s solo exhibitions include Data Error – Roma Antichità, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome (2023); Grey Magic, Esther Schipper, Berlin (2015); Small Survey on Nothingness, Schering Foundation, Berlin (2014); Expedition Bus-Shaman Travel, solo presentation at abc Berlin, Station Berlin (2012); Æther – between Cosmology and Consciousness, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011); Voyages Extraordinaires, CRAC Alsace Lorraine, Altkirch (2010); Observatorium, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig (2008), and Encyclopaedia Cinematographica, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2001).

Opening: Thursday, 8. June 2023, 6pm to 9pm

Exhibition dates: Thursday, 8. June – Friday, 6. July 2023

To the Gallery

 

 

Image caption: Christoph Keller, Future Archeologists, 2023, Dreikanal 4K HD Videoinstallation, Maße variabel

Exhibition Christoph Keller – Esther Schipper | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin

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