Künstlerhaus Stuttgart presents the solo exhibition Darstellungen der Zukunft by Danish artist Katya Sander. A large video installation forms the core of the exhibition and deals with the production of future visions. In addition, there are further works and project documentaries on display.

The exhibition is the second part of a long-term project by Katya Sander and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart that was launched with a public workshop in November 2007 and will be concluded in autumn 2008 with a publication. Katya Sander recently took part in the extensive video project 9 Scripts from a Nation at War at documenta 12, Kassel (in collaboration with Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt and David Thorne).

Sander is known not only for her interventions, drawings and photographs but also for her filmic works that examine the influence of imagination on political, everyday and historical events. For Sander, the imaginative contains both subjective thought and ideas of possibility. Political thinking such as the concept of the public or economy is embedded in the work of Katya Sander and examines the development of socially relevant imaginations and the structuring of our actions and reflections. The narrative method of intertwining artificial and documentary material allows exploring the relation between fiction and reality and questioning the state of political subjectivity.

The work Darstellungen der Zeit is based on the question how future visions are created and described; and how these visions influence the presence. Five projections placed side by side show interview recordings of scientists from the fields of demography, stochastic, history of science, finance and insurance. The interviews are edited with scenes of an actress who is on an animated journey across diverse landscapes. The scenes were created by means of a blue screen, an old film technology that creates smooth transitions between different spaces and times. Another reference within the video work is about the interviews and films by the German filmmaker and author Alexander Kluge that include the audience into a process of clarification. The female main character in Katya Sander’s filmic installation is performed by Susanne Sachsse who was filmed during research work. The final scene is an open accumulation of references and narratives that enable and regulate our future visions.

The medium video plays an important role in Katya Sander’s works and goes beyond an illustration of facts or the construction of narratives. The artist examines the relationship between subjectivity and narration by creating a precise spacial screening of the filmic materials and an analysis of its effects on spectators. The installations usually consist of multiple projections within specific architectonical structures that allow different angles of view. In fact, the installation Darstellungen der Zukunft is a quintuple projection that is arranged in special a way: fragments are projected in different combinations and the total installation cannot be seen at once.