Marian Mayland Portfolio
Der Ammonit (film / exhibition) (in preproduction) Der Ammonit is a planned essayistic short film on a prisoner of war camp from WWII, the arms industry in the Ruhr area and the relation between individual and collective memory. Based on a childhood memory of the artist finding a fossilized Ammonite that was once part of a railroad track, the aim is to follow up on the connections between the former POW camp Stalag VI F in Bocholt, Germany and the Krupp Company in Essen (Ruhr), Germany. The Ruhr area s history is a relatively short, albeit complicated one. Industry and working class heritage are closely tied to German imperialist aggression. However, the Ruhr industry and especially the Krupp family still serve as signifiers for a perceived distant past of abundant jobs, prosperity and care. The central role of Krupp and the whole heavy industry of the Ruhr area in the Nazi era is rarely elaborated in public. contd. next page >>
Der Ammonit (film / exhibition) (in preproduction) preproduction stills
How not to make sense of anything (A bar on Majorca), 2017-18 Video Installation, CAD-Prints, vinyl cut, digital print, dimensions variable. 2K-video, Colour and B/W, Stereo, 15m (Loop) exhibition view Hamburg Documentary Film Week, 2018
A bar on Majorca (Eine Kneipe auf Malle), 2017 2K-Video, 1.85:1, Colour and B/W, Stereo, 15m Essen, Germany, 2016. Two obsolete apparitions: Super 8mm film stock, Kodachrome K40, exposed 30 years past its expiry date and the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). On January 17th, 2017, the second, four-year long trial on a proposed ban of the NPD ended. The German Supreme Court decided against the ban. A party that seems too insignificant to prohibit its existence. A short film on the human tendency to find patterns in noise. A film on conspiracy theory, on the state of the left, and on how ideology is transported through the selection of seemingly neutral facts. Festival participations & awards: Oberhausen Int l Short Film Festival 2018 (Award of the NRW comp.) European Media Art Festival (EMAF) Osnabrück 2018 Hamburg Int l Short Film Festival 2018 transmediale 2018 face value, HKW Berlin Int l Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2017 Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival 2017 UNDOX, 21er Haus, Vienna Short Film Festival Cologne (KFFK) 2017 (3d jury award) blicke. Filmfestival des Ruhrgebiets, Bochum 2017 (Querdenker-award) Exhibitions: Hamburg Documentary Film Week 2018 Kunsthalle Basel 2017 House of electronic Arts Basel 2017
Videostill exhibition view Kunsthalle Basel, 2017 Videostill exhibition view House of electronic Arts Basel, 2017
Driving around where the crescents used to be. A script, 2015 HD-Video, 16:9, colour, sound, 15m 7s. A short, essayistic palimpsest, which meanders through the history of a neighbourhood in Manchester, UK. In the early 1970s construction began on the Hulme Crescents, a social housing estate for 13,000 inhabitants. The development was soon after its opening in 1972 known to be haunted by problems. After the complex was abandoned by the city council in 1984, the crescents morphed into a huge urban squat - a home to punks, new age travellers and the acid house party scene. After the 1981 riots in many UK cities, the Thatcher government devised plans to redevelop troublesome estates across the country. The bulldozers moved in in the early 1990s and Hulme was subsequently razed and constructed anew for the second time in 40 years.
Driving around where the crescents used to be. A script, 2015 Videostills
New Dark Age, 2015 Video game modification, CRT-screens, personal computers, LCD-screens; dimensions variable exhibition view Institut Kunst, HGK/FHNW, Basel
New Dark Age, 2015 Installation view, Kunsthalle Basel
New Dark Age, 2015 Two CRT-screens each show a scene of the 1999 computer game Deus Ex. These scenes are being rendered in real-time by a modified version of the game that is being run on two computers. Both scenes are part of one of the possible endings of the game narrative. The camera and the objects, including the protagonist, stand still, but the so-called sprites (representations of lightning, fog and flickering computer screens) are moving. To the right of each screen, a LED TV shows the original subtitles of this ending sequence. In the narrative of the game world, the internet is completely surveilled through a centralized node. The cinematic which is quoted shows the destruction of this surveillance apparatus and thus of the internet itself. The subtitles read: again, live in villages...if you receive this, if you survive, then find us...find us.... This seperated narrative fragment on the one hand references teleological conceptions of history, which are of interest to me in the context of an inquiry into modernism. A utopian, almost eschatological event (an apocalyptic ending to information technology) is being frozen in a computer-generated loop. On the other hand, the game shown and its aesthetics mark a historical turning point. In the cyberpunk-world of Deus Ex almost all conspiracy theories which were popular in the 1990s turn out to be real (Illuminati, Aliens, Area 51, biotechnologically biologically engineered diseases, etc.). and...j.c...the net s going...the net s going black, J.C......no more infolinks, transmissions of any kind...we ll start Since 2001 and 9/11, conspiracist ideologies, in combination with spiritual tendencies (Conspirituality), have gained widespead discursive power. Especially new far-right and Third Way movements have gained leverage due to the groundwork of conspiracy theoreticians of the 2000s and 2010s.
Der Ammonit, 2015 edition of 250, A5, 24 pages each, colour 24-page booklet highlighting connections between a WWII POW camp in my former hometown, the Krupp company and its successor, the Krupp foundation. Based on a childhood memory of finding a fossilized ammonite which was part of a former railroad tracks leading to the camp.
untitled (Agrippa), 2014 imac G5, video (20:13, loop, mute), wood, aluminum, lacquer, pencil. dimensions variable above: exhibition view «Schichtwechsel», Wuppertal. right: detail, detail, handwritten note on wall translation of the note on the wall: In 1992 Dennish Ashbaugh, William Gibson and Kevin Begos Jr. published the artist book Agrippa (a book of the dead). The book contained etchings by Ashbaugh, which were (allegedly) prepared with a substance intended to speed up the fading of the colors they were printed with. A poem by William Gibson was enclosed on a floppy disk, which, in a way similar to the etchings, encrypted itself irreversibly after displaying itself only once. The video from the year 2008 shown here depicts an emulation of the program, based on a bit-level copy of the original disk. The three authors gave permission to a team of the University of Maryland to release the video and the copy on the internet, even though the resulting permanent availability irreversably destroys the core feature of the original work. Marian Mayland, 2014
ohne Titel (Cd. J. 1-5), 2013 Series of 5 drawings (mixed media on paper)
untitled (Cd. J. 5), 2013 mixed media on paper, approx. 15 x 22 cm
Marian Mayland born 1988 Education 2015-16 2014-15 Philosophy in the context of art, KKH Stockholm, SE Prof. Peter Osborne Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, AT (Erasmus) Prof. Marina Gržinić 2013-15 MFA, Art Institute, FHNW/HGK Basel, CH Prof. Chus Martinez, Dr. Roman Kurzmeyer, Alexandra Navratil et al Selected recent exhibitions/festivals/screenings 2018 transmediale face value, HKW Berlin, DE Hamburg Documentary Film Week, DE European Media Art Festival Osnabrück, DE Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, DE Hamburg International Short Film Festival, DE Edinburgh International Film Festival, UK 2017 Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt, Jahresausstellung Werkbeiträge, Kunsthalle Basel, CH Regionale 18 House of Electronic Arts Basel, CH IDFA, Amsterdam, NL Kassel Dokfest, DE 2007-13 fadbk Essen, DE Cologne Short Film Festival, DE blicke. Filmfestival des Ruhrgebiets, Bochum, DE UNDOX, 21er Haus, Vienna, AT 2016 Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, DE Residencies/awards Kumu Art Film Fest., Eesti Kunstimuuseum, Tallinn, ES 2018 Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Award of the NRW-competition 2017 Cologne Short Film Festival, 3d Jury Prize blicke. Filmfestival des Ruhrgebiets, Querdenkerpreis 2016 Residency Berlin, Atelier Mondial Basel Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt, Werkbeitrag 2015 blicke. Filmfestival des Ruhrgebiets, Bochum, DE Rundgang, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Mx. World. On the Million Genders of the Real. MFA graduation exhibition, Kunsthalle Basel