The moving image is the main concern of my artistic practice. I’m assembling imagery, text, drawing, abstract color elements and sound to form intricate montages, with all the elements treated as equal layers.
Dagmar Schürrer is a Berlin based artist from Austria, who studied Fine Art at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in London. Since her graduation in 2011 her work was selected, amongst others, for New Contemporaries 2011 at the ICA, London, the 2013 Impakt Festival in Utrecht, NL, or the Fullframe Festival 2014 at the MUMOK Kino, Vienna. She was shortlisted for the Berlin Art Prize in 2013 and in 2016 she was accepted for the Goldrausch Künstlerinnen scholarship in Berlin. In both 2013 and 2016 she was shortlisted for the Tenderpixel Award in London, UK. In 2016, Dagmar Schürrer was selected to show her work at the 5th Moscow Biennale for Young Art.
Ideal Deficiency
HD Video / 06:46 min / 2016
Starting point for ‘Ideal Deficiency’ is the omnipresent striving for efficiency and optimisation in all ways of life. The text in the video mirrors these constant demands. But what happens, if an efficient system, designed to constantly flow, is interrupted? Dagmar Schürrer looks at ruptures and interferences and contrasts machine-like perfectionism and slickness with the vulnerability of the human body.
The for the artist typical combination of text and geometrical, fractured composition is complemented with the introduction of drawings. Delicate and static lines are added onto the moving image, on the one hand anchoring the multi-layered composition and on the other hand suggesting additional, hidden layers in the work. The work triggers an ambience of eerie doubt over technical and digital progress on the one hand, but at the same time emanates a strange feeling of pacification.
I Want To Be Like You
HD Video / 05:45 min / 2016
“I Want To Be Like You” is a video-collage of appropriated internet footage and abstract geometrical elements. Multiple panels appear and disappear on the fragmented screen. This choreography is underlined by an immersive sound of noises, beats and musical samples. The tranquility of the slowly moving waves in the dark background anchors the flickering imagery. Above it all floats a monologue of an unknown subject, that reflects on a changing and fading relationship. With the collage of sound, text and images of random objects, lifestyle products and technical devices, the artist wants to create a space for the rethinking of the relationships to our material and increasingly immaterial surroundings.
“I Want To Be Like You” reflects on the relation of humans as the acting subjects to seemingly passive objects in the wake of a rapid digitalisation. What is going to happen to material objects when the borders to the digital realm are becoming more and more indistinct? One might want to call for a rethinking of our relationship to objects and the ways of their production, use and disposal.