Karina Smigla-Bobinski

KARINA SMIGLA-BOBINSKI

www.smigla-bobinski.com
TEXTE
Prof. Mike Stubbs
Cornelia Kleÿboldt, M.A.
Dr. Phil. Tatjana Schönwälder-Kuntze
Dr. Thomas Huber
AUFNAHMEN
Baris Ozcetin
Christian Ditsch
Wlodek Filipczak
Caitlin Dremotecontrol Brown
Ricardo Quaresma Vieira
Karina Smigla-Bobinski
PARTNER / SPONSOREN
Laurie Anderson
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Kulturstiftung des Bundes
Hauptstadtkulturfonds
MoTA Museum of Transitory Art in Ljubljana
Dramatic Arts Center Tehran
Busan Biennale
Hochhinaus Luftwerbegesellschaft mbH
Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz
Olympiapark München GmbH
Filmbüro Bremen e.V.
CS Wing Fook in Hong Kong
Goethe Institut
TUFA Kultur- & Kommunikationszentrum in Trier
SWOD
GESTALTUNG
MG Atelier Munich

KARINA SMIGLA-BOBINSKI
installations / sculptures / projects

ADA
analog interactive installation / kinetic sculpture / post-digital drawing machine
components > PVC balloon, charcoals, helium, air
dimensions > 3 m diameter
space > variable, most: 10 m long x 6 m wide x 4 m high
try out > 2010, Kunstverein in Ebersberg by Munich / Germany
world premiere > 2011, FILE – Electronic Language Int. Festival, São Paulo / Brazil
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/ADA
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/ADA/video.html

ADA analog interactive installation / kinetic sculpture / post-digital drawing machine
Jean Tinguely «Méta-Matic» 1959
Similiar to Tinguely‘s «Méta-Matics», is „ADA“ an artwork with a soul. It acts itself. At Tinguely‘s it is sufficient
to be an unwearily struggling mechanical being. He took it wryly: the machine produces nothing but its
industrial self-destruction. Whereas «ADA» by Karina Smigla-Bobinski, is a post-industrial „creature“, visitor
animated, creatively acting artist-sculpture, self-forming artwork, resembling a molecular hybrid, such as a
one from nano biotechnology. It developes the same rotating silicon-carbon-hybrids, midget tools, miniature
machines able to generate simple structures.
«ADA» is much larger, esthetical much complexer, an interactive art-making machine. Filled up with helium,
floating freely in room, atransparent, membrane-like globe, spiked with charcoals that leave marks on the
walls, ceilings and floors. Marks which «ADA» produces quite autonomously, athough moved by a visitor. The
globe obtains aura of liveliness and its black coal traces, the appearance of being a drawing . The globe put
in action, fabricate a composition of lines and points, which remains incalculable in their intensity, expression,
form however hard the visitor tries to control «ADA», to drive her, to domesticate her. Whatever he tries out,
he would notice very soon, that «ADA» is an independent performer, studding the originaly white walls with
drawings and signs. More and more complicated fabric structure arise. It is a movement exprienced visually,
which like a computer make an unforeseeable output after entering a command. Not in vain « ADA» reminds
of Ada Lovelace, who in 19th century together with Charles Babbage developed the very first prototype of a
computer. Babbage provided the preliminary computing machine, Lovelace the first software. A symbiosis of
mathematics with the romantic legacy of her father Lord Byron emmerged there. Ada Lovelace intended to
create a machine that would be able to create works of art, such as poetry, music, or pictures, like an artist
does. «ADA» by Karina Smigla-Bobinski stands in this very tradition, as well as in the one of Vannevar Bush,
who build a Memex Maschine (Memory Index) in 1930 („We wanted the memex to behave like the intricate
web of trails carried by the cells of the brain“), or the Jacquard‘s loom, that in order to weave flowers and leaves
needed a punch card; or the „analytic machine“ of Babbage which extracted algorithmic paterns.
«ADA» uprose in nowadays spirit of biotechnology. She is a vital performance-machine, and her paterns of
lines and points, get more and more complex as the number of the audience playing-in encreases. Leaving
traces which neither the artist nor visitors are able to decipher, not to mention «ADA» herself either. And still,
«ADA‘s» work is unmistakable potentially humane, because the only available decoding method for these
signs and drawings , is the association which our brain corresponds at the most when it sleeps: the truculent
jazziness of our dreams.

KALEIDOSCOPE
analog interactive installation / placebo painting / open frameworks
large scale streaming on the LED facade
components > light box, PVC foil, inks, LED screen / Projection
dimention > variable
premiere > 2016, FILE – Electronic Language Int. Festival / São Paulo (Brazil)
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/KALEIDOSCOPE
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/KALEIDOSCOPE/video.html

SIMULACRA interactive video installation / analogue mental cinema
Karina Smigla-Bobinski created interactive apparatuses generating astonishing optical effects and an consciousness-expanding visual experience. When
using those objects, one always arrives at that point where perception processes that normally happen totally in the subconscious emerge to the surface
and get tangible, thereby providing fascinating experiences.
KALEIDOSKOP functions as a very large and completely walkable lightbox. On its surface float in separate layers inks in cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY).
But these colors what we see are not there, they do not exist outside of our head, they are completely created by our brain and so definitely „virtual“.
Every kind of pressure – be it with one finger, with the feet or be it with the entire body – displaces and shifts the inks and it produced by overlapping the
„real“ colors red, green and blue (RGB), which can be picked up and recorded by human retina.
The liquids are serving as filters and transform the white backlight of the box in infinite variations.
Filters change the colors by letting through only certain wavelengths of the light. Normally, they are static objects – glass plates or foils – whose modulation
effects always stay the same. In KALEIDOSKOP the filtering inks are freeflowing and so the rigid analytic investigation of the laws of optic turns into a psychedelic
experience within a delirious abundance of colors.
Further more, Karina transfers the aesthetic force of the instalation into the public space on a very large scale: A camera faced centrally downwards from
above is shooting the people using the playing surface. This means the outcomes of this CMY-RGB framework are picked up and recorded in digital coding
systems. The footage is displayed in pure RGB coding on the huge LED facade of the festival building. But before this RGB light could be pick up by our
eyes, it passes through auto-typical color synthesis.
This color mixing work in exactly opposite way as the colors mixing on the light box with the inks. Here the „real“ colors red, green and blue (RGB) produce
by switching off one of the colors the „virtual“ colors.
Color syntesis

SIMULACRA
interactive video installation / analogue mental cinema
components > 4 monitors, magnifying glasses, mini video player, power cables, splitter, mini amplifier, small spikers
dimention > 1,5 m long x 1,5 m wide x hight of the space
premiere > 2013, November 27 > MoTA Museum of Transitory Art, Ljubljana / Slovenia
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/SIMULACRA
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/SIMULACRA/video.html

SIMULACRA interactive video installation / analogue mental cinema
SIMULACRA is an optophysical experimental arrangement with which Karina Smigla-Bobinski succeeds to build a
bridge between media technology and perception philosophy. At its heart are four LCD monitor panels, which are
assembled in the form of a hollow square, and installed at eye level in the middle of the room. The ensemble appears
internally gutted, overgrown and embraced. A tangle of cables and control devices pours out of the middle of the
square. All around it several magnifying lenses dangle from chains. The imageless glaring ray of the monitors looks as
if the images had fallen out of them. What remains is the essence of the medium: Light.
But the images are still in the screens. It requires only a small visual aid to recognise them. LCD-Monitors require
several polarising films in front and behind the pixel layers to produce visible images. These polarising films filter the
certain vibration directions of the emitting light. One of them is located on the surface of the monitor and can easily
be scraped off using solvent and a glass scraper. The stripped monitor doesn‘t display any more pictures, but shines
with an intense white light.
If you hold a polarising film, as in SIMULACRA in a magnifying glass version, before the monitor, then the function is
restored. It is an impressive, wondrous experience when images suddenly appear from the pure white by the mare
glance through a seemingly transparent film. But if you turn the lens in front of your eyes, the polarising structure of
the film creates wild colour shifts or even complementary negative images. In the interaction with SIMULACRA other
visual experiences were discovered by the visitors: If you hold a magnifying glass in front of each eye and turn them
differently, the result is a hologram-like image. Two lenses stacked on each other in a ninety degrees angle darken
the picture completely.
In the design of video images that run across the screens, Karina Smigla-Bobinski worked skilfully with the effect of an
opaque glistening body of light: - hands, feet, long black hair press against the inside surface of the screens, making
them only visible within the contact, before disappearing into the white nothingness.
Color shifts due the polarizing film
SIMULACRA penetrates deep into the discourses of subject and view, image and reality. Taking a magnifying glass
(possibly waiting until one is free), to position one-selves between other people in front of the screens, viewing the
images clearly or alienated with a magnifying glass – perceiving the work requires physical actions, an active positioning,
which surpasses the accustomed visual process.Thus, the viewers are motivated to reflect on their patterns of
perception. Smigla-Bobinski particularly tries to create an awareness for the visual culture of the virtual space and its
process of imagination.We all move through our worlds in constant interaction between external and internal imagesand
ourselves.. Virtuality and reality are questions of perception, and perception is a matter of awareness. In an era
of an unending possibility of increasing the development imaging media, these terms have experienced an equally
infinite fragmentation.
In the works title Karina Smigla-Bobinski uses a term that is being used since the ancient philosophy for various forms
of pictorial representation. Understood as a „similar „ or „realistic“ image of natural things and divine beings, the „ simulacrum“
was regarded as deficient due to its subordination in relation to what is depicted original. The term won a new
meaning in the reassessment of signs in postmodern philosophy. The difference between the sign and the signified
and thus also between the image and what it represents has been defined by Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and
Gilles Deleuze as the nucleus of creative processes. In dealing with the signs, even in its mere reading, there will be a
profound examination of the levels of reality, each sign is a reconstructional process in which there may be gaps and
shifts in meaning. This leaves space for not only interpretation but also new creation.

The images have mushroomed in recent decades in the evolution of media. In the early 1980s, Jean Baudrillard subjected „ Simulacra
and Simulation“ to a fundamental critique. He noted a surfeit of images, which leads to a general loss of reference to reality.
The world behind it begins to become irrelevant as the experiential space, in which a differentiation between virtual and real is still
possible, increasingly dwindles. But this antagonism has become historic. The new media are not new anymore - back in the late
1990s Nicholas Negroponte proclaimed the digital revolution to be finished and viewed the later spawned technologies as a „compost
for new ideas.“ Karina Smigla - Bobinski designed SIMULACRA with exactly this historical awareness : The installation seems
crude, the devices have lost their glory, their auratic presence. The tangle of cables and wires seem like the climbing plants that
start to overgrow sunken wreckages - an association that is particularly strong due to the video. The laborious modification of the
monitors with solvent and glass scraper was called by Smigla-Bobinski herself „an analog attack on the digital images technique“.
The Virtual is an essential part of our contemporary reality. It refers to a form of existence beyond the physical world, but it carries
physical qualities in the form of a potential. The categories „real“ and „virtual“ are no indicator for the strength of an image. Zizeks
analysis of film, for example, demonstrates through a psychoanalytic perspective based on Lacan, the persistent interaction between
levels of realty, images and consciousness we encounter on our journey through an medial universe.
The decisive factor is the awareness to this interaction. In Simulacra, Smigla-Bobinski lets the viewer have a peek into her view
of the how the virtual works: in the digital video, body parts appear on a white glowing surface, but we recognise this as a person
who is swimming in a brightly lit tank filled with a milky fluid. Without the ‚seeing aid‘ the screens seem to show the empty tank, but
viewed through the film, the figure is partially visible. This results in the impression that the visual aid gives rise to the figure itself.
However, the person is always present in the monitor pixels. What is brought to light is the video in itself - a significant difference
in the context of negotiating the remuneration of virtuality and reality. A disembodied medium seems to create a body, a person.
Another illusion as an impulse for reflection lies in the arrangement of the monitors: Under the influence of the video it is almost
inevitable to not conceive the radiant square as just that space in which the person is swimming – similar to believing as a child,
that miniature people are living in or on TV. But since the same video is playing on all four screens, spatial experiences are pure
imagination.
That play of absence was done by Alphonse Allais at the end of the 19th century. He created soundless songs and monochrome
black or white images, in which only the title heralded the content. Karina Smigla-Bobinski puts the accent on the virtuality of the
absence, in the apparent emptiness a representation of something appears. It is a representation devoid of imagery, unencumbered
by the pictorial. It is a representation that shows nothing but the presentation layer itself, it is the pure light in which any
occurrence is possible. The magnifiers in SIMULACRA only let one of many possible representations emerge. SIMULACRA is a
space of experience of the interaction between the magic of the images and the intellectual understanding, with plenty of space
for critical reflection. Its kind of deconstruction - both technically and aesthetically - is aimed at easing the basic relations: between
( technical ) media and image, between picture and the pictured there, between perception and imagination. These are the gaps
from which something new can arise.

CONE
in situ kinetic sound installation
components > metal construction, foil, speaker, springs, ropes
dimensions > about 10 m diameter x 6 m
premiere > November 2013 in MSGSÜ Tophane-i Amire Culture and Arts Center in Istanbul / Turkey
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/CONE
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/CONE/video.html

CONE - in situ kinetic sound installation
In cases of venues such as the Tophane-i Amire Culture and Art Centre, that radiate their own aesthetic,
and furthermore represent a significant cultural epoch, it is more then tempting to create an interplay
between architecture and art.
Smigla-Bobinskis interpretation, the room filling installation ‚Cone‘, which she specially designed for
this venue whilst staying in Istanbul, reaches its full effect through simplicity and clear materials within
the given space. These give form and substance their maximal expression.
MSGSÜ Tophane-i Amire Culture
Arts Center in Istanbul, Turkey
The venue itself is situated in an impressive historical building, with a square ground structure. A dome
arches over the main space, that was built in the ottoman time for the purpose of building canons.
Sufficient light is provided by an original iron ring construction holding lamps that is held up by four
massive chains. Its diameter of 10 meters and the handcrafted heaviness, give the iron ring, as well
as the architecture surrounding it a glow of the ottoman past, and continue the contrast between the
square floor and its dome.
Onto said iron circle Smigla-Bobinski has hung a light plastic ring on springs, which holds a transparent
plastic cone, consisting of glued together triangular strips of thin drop cloth, an ordinary material from
a hardware store. From the plastic ring strings are connecting the cone with a large speaker, which is
playing drop sounds. Whenever an acoustic drop falls, the vibrations are led over into the cone. The
beam light from the lamps on the iron ring is reverberated from the delicate membrane of the cone onto
the floor, and every vibration from the drop sounds makes these dance as though an actual drop had
fallen into the cone.
Where are these drops coming from, someone might ask. A small circular opening is situated in the
middle of the dome, from which the drops are seemingly falling into the dark point of the upside-down
cone, which appears to hold water. But this is only an illusion, an inter medial intervention, which makes
the space imaginarily open. The bass frequencies of the drop sound are reinforced and cause the
speaker membrane to vibrate strongely, which is transmitted through the strings into the plastic cone.
The rhythm of the sound creates a pulsing continuum, that echoes from the stones of the old building
and seems to gnaw at them and opens the consciousness for the change-ripe history between epochs
and the significant development from weapons to culture production. The subtile metaphor of time is
captured by the elementary Quality of the form language of Smigla-Bobinskis installation and it constitutes
an impressive contrast to the frailty of the materials used.

In iconology the cone is connected with the ambivalence between the centrifugal
and -pedal dynamic of giving and receiving. Besides the specific association to
fertility, wealth and power, there are others that point to the time continuum.
And in mathematics two cones touching each other at their points symbolise time,
the vectors between past and future meet each other in the present. Similar to an
hourglass the cone might be just one of two cones, loosing and receiving drops
of time.
In the weapon smithery of Tophane-i Amire with its dome, that traditionaly embodies
a sign of firmanent, the form of cone interacts complexly with the enviroment.
It varied the form of dome and generated a reverse movement to it. Opening upwards,
contradicted retrieving effect of the dome, opened the space.
And then, this plastic drop cloth, an essential requisite for renovations, a rescue
tool to cover leaky roofs. The irritating picture of a drop falling through a hole in the
dome roof – ‚Cone‘ is Smigla-Bobinskis metaphor of a country in turbulence between
an orientation towards the Europe and a reinforced religious tendencies, between
the bustle of a corrupt political elite and the fascinating self-empowerment
of the young generation, whose loud protest in the street echoed in the room of
Tophane-i Amire Culture and Art Centre during the exhibition.
A visualisation of Timespace - the past
light cone (at bottom), the present, and
the future light cone

MORNING STAR
sculptural installation
description > sculptural installation
components > 300 arrows
dimensions > 2 m diameter
premiere > 2013, TUFA Trier / Germany
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/MORGENSTERN
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/MORGENSTERN/video.html

MORNING STAR sculptural installation
Morning Star is a celebration of ambivalence. The first look reveals an aureole of black lines that are intercepted
with white and red, in the end spreading out into slender triangles. Just as though an explosive charge
has been detonated and all the material is being hurled into every direction – pure energy near the centre and
slowing down movement and chaos to the outside.
But in this same first glance the impression of a centripetal movement is being created. Everything is being
pulled into this black hole, its gravity causes the collapse. Now the lines can be seen as what they are: arrows,
who‘s heads are hidden from sight inside the centre of a three dimensional system. Morning Stars radiant form
reminds of an energetic state that is frozen in between both expansion and implosion.
„Slayer“ weapons
Morning Star (first from left)
For Smigla-Bobinski arrows represent a radical dualism: the arrowhead made out of cold steel and at the end
the feather – the one end is aggression and hardness, the other is softness, lightness and the feeling of freedom,
hold together by a slim black line. This dualism symbolises the dualism of human interaction. Morning
Star is Smigla-Bobinskis contribution to a group exhibition that is part of an transnational european culture
project. The Exhibitions title and theme is “gast.freund.schaft” (translated it means hospitality, but intrinsic in
the german compound are the words for guest, friend and a morphological part, that in other situations means
arrow). It is a vivisection of a word and the slightly different writhing motivates the reflexion about the qualities.
Smigla-Bobinski loves to etymologically, or rather symbolically and iconically investigate the themes and motives
of her work. Her focus concerning the exhibitions title lay on the suffix schaft but shifted the meaning from
its morphological function to the nominal one Schaft (arrow shank), that is located in between the arrow head
and the feathers. The arrow shank, with its connecting existence between two extremes, bestows the arrow a
sign quality, which is used by Smigla-Bobinski in reference to the words guest and friend.
Arrow head or feather – which is the part we receive our guests? Morning Star is a ball, where the aggressive
arrowheads disappear in the hard centre and the benevolence is turned to the outside or surface. Hospitality
is a central issue within the art project (called “Eurovisionen”) and the exhibition: five regional artists invite
a guest from another european country for a collaboration on the european. Smigla-Bobinski has been living
in Germany for years, but has been invited by Bodo Korsig, an artist from Trier, because of her polish
background. She used her deep roots in both cultures to visualise the ambivalence concerning hospitality,
especially in socio-political context of the European Union. In poland hospitality is highly important, but sociopolitically
viewed the character is more of an naïve acceptance in a more aggressive system.

The name Morning Star itself has an irritating ambivalence: on one side it is another name for Venus, our brightest
star, that is the first one to appear in the west, and the last one to be seen in the east. On the other side it is
the name of a brute weapon, that was used from the early Middle Ages to the trench fights of the Second World
War. It is not clear wether the weapon derives its name from its form or the fact that it was preferably used in
the early hours of a fight. The weapon consists of a ball that is covered in spikes. Venus, the personification of
femaleness and the goddess of love and beauty, is sometimes depicted with a arrow, that will pierce a heart,
which originally is an attribute of Armor, her son. But just like that the two polarities meet.
But Smigla-Bobinskis Morning Star is not an iconic visualisation of that ambivalent symbolism, instead it is an
energetic representation of the ambivalence between word and union, centrifugal expansion and centrifugal
fusion, which can be conceived even before any knowledge of the iconic background. In connection with Bodo
Korsigs installation of a wild swarm of arrows stuck in the walls on their flight towards the Morning Star, the kinetic
energy is impressively visualised. The ensemble also shows a connection to ADA (2010) the ball covered
with charcoal sticks, which leaves marks as it is being moved about by visitors.
Beham, Sebald - Venus (Morning Star)
In the context of critically revising hospitality, Morning Star is not representing an ideal of human interaction, but
an open representation of conflictive energies and offers no permanent solution. Arrows although their heads
are invisible because they all face the same small space in the middle, stay weapons. But an arrow also symbolises
the deference to the world. The arrow star has hidden its threat in its core, but it has become blind and
closed up to the world. To start a dialogue would then mean the risk of opening that star and has to find a way
of doing so in the presence of arrowheads.

ALIAS
interactive video light installation
components > screen, theater light, video projector
dimensions > 4 x 2 m diameter
space > variable, most: 10 m long x 4 m wide x 2,5 m high
premiere > 2004, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen / Germany
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/ALIAS

ALIAS interactive video light installation
The video installation by Karina Smigla-Bobinski is an arrangement of projections and spectators. Entering spectators
stand in front of a light flooded wall. By moving inside of the room, the spectators themselves interrupt the
light flow, shadowing the wall as the light projector is situated in the rear of the room. Inside the shadow projections
of other people get visible. They show persons in real size, whose faces betray various origins and national roots.
Standing in front of the wall one can see his own shadow filled with a person who apparently looks him into the
eyes, moving slightly as if listening heedful to him, or maybe to his thoughts only.
Thus, in the installation, the spectator meets the outline of his own figure and the same time the image of a stranger
who seems to hide behind the light wall. Moving along the wall, one can fill his own shadow-outline with different
appearances. His perception confronts images in various levels. The real shadow as the elementary image and
evidence of ones presence and then the light generated images (still in danger of being hidden by the other light) of
absent persons. If the spectator is not alone in the room, he sees the other persons around him and their shadows
interact strangely as well.
Plato‘s Allegory of the Cave
(illustration by Mats Halldin)
In Platos allegory of the cave the shadows that the people see projected against the cave wall present a metaphor
for the different levels of knowledge. The different modes of knowledge are illustrated through different modes of
perception in a hierarchy between light and shadow: the world of the ideal forms is the domain of light, which can
dazzle somebody if unprepared. At the same time the shadows of these ideal forms are the only thing the people
conceive as their reality.
The cave is a world of semidarkness, the kingdom of shadows.
Without taking it too far one can see the similarities between the two concepts, the allegory of the cave and Karina
Smigla-Bobinskis installation: The well thought through structure, the trias of light, shadows and darkness, the isolation
in the cave and the inside of the „white cube“ gallery and maybe most important the relation between object
and image - the significance of images.
Plato presents a dialectic order of the world, Smigla-Bobinski puts all images and objects into one light space.
Through the outshining of the projections by the white light, presence and visibility get decoupled. Created and
destroyed by the same medium, light, the video images need a recipient for their sensual unfolding. This recipient
is the visitor, one could go as far as to call the visitor the medium, who makes these video people visible through
his own silhouette.
Ultimately the installation can be understood as a beautiful metaphor for the dependency of art: without a viewer
or visitor it is trapped in an incomplete existence.

In Smigla-Bobinskis „bright cave“ the visitor are alienated in an intimate situation. The strange confrontation with
the personal shadow and the appearance of a stranger inside of it creates a tension between individuality conceived
within the own silhouette and the presence of an image of somebody else. This is emphasized by the slight
movements of the video stranger, who seems more alive by this than a mere photo could ever achieve. It is somehow
irritating to be unable to communicate with the shadow person. One can only stand still and gaze at the
other.
Mirror scene with Groucho and Harpo
Marx Brothers „Duck Soup“
Just as in the classical slapstick of Marx Brothers, where two comedians play each other‘s mirror reflexion on each
side of an empty frame, the visitor can mime video persons posture, movement and attitude, differences and the
asynchronism of these two ‚mirror images‘ produces a confusion. Thus the visitor changes the sides and takes
over the role of the image or copy. On the other side one is able to take the position of a creator: letting the other
person appear or disappear at will.
It is possible to see it as a reminiscence of the theory of the Looking Glas Phase by Jacques Lacan. The reflexion in
the mirror is gradually recognized by small children as their own reflexion, as a part of their own identity. This phase
is an important step towards self awareness. The ‚opposite image‘ in the mirror, that is at the same time strange
and totally dependent on oneself, could be understood as a proposition for an alternative identity.
The contemporary disourse on the identity crisis within society is obviously also incorporated into the concept.
The loss of conventional roles elicits a search for individuality and originality which leads to a general confusion
about identity. Different Identities get mixed, overlapped and it is hard to find a distinction between identity and
personality.
Side by side to the mentioned possibilities of interpretation the shadow-images are not alterable by the viewer, they
are not illusions in the platonic sense, but hermetically sealed in traces of the Others, both representing the strange
and the complexity of the perceived white and pure light, which is not only physical energy but also possesses
transcendental qualities.

AQUARIUM
video mapping in public space
components > rear projection canvas, video, projector
dimensions > 10 x 6 m diameter
premiere > 2008, State Theater on Gaertnerplatz, Munich / Germany
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/AQUARIUM
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/AQUARIUM/video.html

AQUARIUM video mapping in public space
On occasion of its 850th anniversary Munich celebrated itself with an array of events surrounding the motto “Building
Bridges”. As a Place that like no other depicts the hip glamour of well-being the city basks in, the Gärtnerplatz in the
district of Isarvorstadt attracts a vast number of people with its cafés, fashion shops, grassy places to lounge on and
the opera house, that was erected in the second half of the 19th century. This music theatre, which mainly stages
popular operas, operettas and musicals, was itself used as a stage for the video installation “Aquarium” by Karina
Smigla-Bobinski and Beatriz von Eidlitz, causing a distorting spiel.
After the visitors left the theatre, a surreal transformation took place behind the round arch windows on the first floor,
which open up to the foyer. Where just moments before music lovers had lounged, enormous goldfish suddenly
swam in a pitch black, fathomless space, that had been intricately designed by Smigla-Bobinski via Video-Mapping
thechnology. It seemed as though the empty theatre became the home of magically shimmering, gigantic pond creatures.
They moved slowly about in this fathomless space, majestically showing off their colourful bodies, and doing
what we perceive them to always do: gaping through the windows at the city night.
Fish eye is the name for a camera lens that, similar to the sense organ of these animals, distorts the 180 degree
view of the world. The gaze of a fish naturally distorts our physical form and a camera lens, no matter what particular
kind, that is pointed at us makes us conscious of our own physical form. Without following this path of association
any further, one can nonetheless point out, that “Aquarium” plays with the concept of seeing and being seen. Looking
at the fishes intrinsically means a glare back, although by reversing the scales, the artist also reverses the power
relations.
This confrontation poses questions about the boundaries between perception and understanding. Smigla-Bobinski
refers to a speech held by David Foster Wallace called ‚This is Water‘, which he presented to the university graduates
in 2005. In his speech Wallace tables the parable of two young fish. They meet an older fish while swimming, who
asks them: ‚Hey guys, how‘s the water?‘. The two younger fish keep on swimming, but one of them turns around
and asks in return: ‚What the hell is water?‘. It‘s deeper meaning revers to the inability to perceive the truth about the
nearest and most natural reality around us. Wallace deduces his plea for empathy from his parable.
The daily routines and the pursue for money and influence, that radically limits our awareness for other people.
Through the monumentalising the fish and the location choice of the theatre, an in itself metaphorical place of seen
and being seen, Karina Smigla-Bobinski accomplishes to create the needed irritation in the perception of the viewer
to jump start the reflexion about the existence of every individual in a social structure.

In Aquarium the animals move in a complex system of symbolic references. In western cultures the spectrum
of meaning is broad – the most interesting ones might be the religious-mythological and the depth
psychological usage, where the fish symbolise (transcendent) truths that are hidden in another element.
C.G. Jung defined them as the archetype of the self. In mythology and eastern cultures goldfish play a
special role. In a well known and recited legend these colourful fish lived in the heavenly kingdom, until
their play became to wild and they fell onto the earth. They became the lucky charm that also promise
wealth and prosperity. Their many possible colours, from yellow over gold to red, makes every goldfish
bowl become a melting pot or aesthetic diversity and therefore a metaphor for the diversity of human
culture.
The New Year‘s carp. The Chinese characters
mean „year-year-have-left“, meaning
„year after year have something left.“
The word „left“ sounds same as the word
„fish“. The picture is a fish, and so, one
transformed intentionally the words „Year
Year have Fish“ into the same-sounding
phrase „Year-years-have-left“.
Nikolai Mette „Goldfish“
Aquarium not only transform the theatre into a goldfish bowl of the bourgeois elite, but the Gärtnerplatz
and the late night visitors into a biotope, a model of life in the city. The placement of the fish in the foyer
pushes them into the world of humans and lets the theatre become a place, where they coexist irritably in
the same element. We are forced to ask ourself. ‚what the hell is water – and what is air?‘. And suddenly
the separating and well as the combining get tangible. The search for the individual happiness is moved
into this world with all the material economical and social challenges: the real life takes place inbetween
empathy and goldfish bowl.

ISLANDS
light installation in public space
components > metal structures, large slides, grass, light, water
dimensions > 1 island: 2 m diameter
space > variable, most: 10 m long x 6 m wide x 4 m high
premiere > 2004 in Olympic Park Munich / Germany
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/AQUARIUM
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/AQUARIUM/video.html

ISLANDS light installation in public space
Islands was created as part of impark in the munich Olympic Park – an public
exhibition, that evaluates the culture and history multi-medial. Smigla-Bobinski developed
a work in three parts for the Olympic lake in the very centre of the park,
that is not conceivable with just one glance.
Islands had two faces: in daylight three grass islands floated on the surface of
the lake, that looked cut from their natural surroundings. The structure transferred
the morphology of the park, with its soft curved hills, into a strange element. In
the evening the little island hills began to disappear and naked women appeared
under them, rolled up in sleep. Their life sized images glimmered strangely on the
water surface. The suggested the uncertain distance of existence and only stayed
visible for a while, since the projector on the inside of the island was charged by
solar cells during the day.
The women inside the hills, that Smigla-Bobinski made visible through the installation
of the hills above water, also symbolise the uncountable helping women, who
removed the debris of destroyed cities after the Second World War. The highest
hill in the park, just next to the lake, consist of the debris of bombed munich and
is called simply ‚Schuttberg‘ (meaning: debris hill). Staging the Olympic Games
at this sight and remodelling the urban periphery had an important symbolic political
relevance. Smigla-Bobinski combined the two leitmotivs of the epochs: the
architecture of the park, its flowing curves and round features, as a statement
against the fascistic celebration of the central axis and the women, who performed
the reconstruction of their cities without the men, who went to war. The artist thereby
lays open the whole nature of this place.
The sleep of the women is a rest after the hard work,but the slumber in itself represents
the profound presence of history. History as in singular history or as in
stories, the backside of reason.
The debris-women are just one of many references of this archetypical phenomenon.
With the representation of the nude body Smigla-Bobinski opens up another
associative space: the hidden and subliminal – but also the universal allegory of
nature, which is cultivated and civilised in parks, while lying dormant under the
lovely surface.

JOSS
an art intervention
components > Joss papers, wood construction
dimensions > variable, most: 10 m long x 1,5 m wide x 2,5 m high
premiere > 2010, „Cultures of Economics“, Berlin / Germany
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/JOSS
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/JOSS/video.html

JOSS an art intervention at the „Cultures of Economics“ in Berlin in cooperation with
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and Kulturstiftung des Bundes
The term joss was derived from the portuguese word for god. In the 17th century jesuit missionaries arrived in China,
they called the gold and silver plated rise papers locals used ‚joss papers‘, god papers.
The missionaries told the Chinese, that all non christian people would end up in hell after death. But the Chinese
adapted it to their own culture, and understood the concept of hell merely as an afterlife hangout-place, not a place
of eternal damnation or suffering. For this afterlife, they need to take everything necessary with them. This all happened
before the annunciation of the world wide reign of christ. It is said: ‚He became salvation and strength‘ The
same words still proclaim the big promise and the power of global economy. Back than christians dreamed of a empire,
where the sun never set, but the global economy succeeded in it first. Even the Joss paper tradition changed
and adapted itself to modern times. It didn‘t suffice to have the most necessary things in afterlife, it was important
what you had with you after death. A normal car wasn‘t enough, you needed the best, a Mercedes S class for example.
Step by step the afterlife mutated, modeled after this world, into a second life of gorgeousness and swank.
By now you can get an iPhone app with which you can burn Joss bank notes digitally, which look a bit like 100 €
notes. The burning is an act of transformation. In the moment of being burnt, the joss papers become something like
the alias of things, send to the world of ghost and materializing there into the ‚real things‘. It is something like a voodoo
cult, where you don‘t only give these things as gifts to dead family members, but also use them as some kind
of bribery, so that the ghosts of ancestors and gods might help you with your own plans. The joss-paper tradition is
not a form of religion. It is rather a superstition, that has spread through almost whole asia. In Taiwan for example
companies burn joss paper every week for economic success and prosperity.
Burning action of JossPaper, Berlin
The Joss show in an ironic way the madness of global economy and consumption. Similar to Fellinis catholic fashion
show in ‚Roma‘, I present a consumption show of the global economy. The installation alludes the concept
of an altar of consumption but at the same time it becomes a kind of generator, when the burning takes place. The
material dreams float away as soap bubbles and hang above the peoples heads.
It would be also possible to see in it a dam, when considering the black wall which seems to be holding back the
mass of paper consumption-goods and thereby creating a free space where interdisciplinary discussions can take
place.
At the end the joss are burnt. The Joss consumption goods I in some ways re-imported from China, from a world
of ghosts back in to our real world, the their origin, are thereby destroyed. A fun fact is that the things that don‘t go
through customs, such forgeries, are being burnt, too. With my installation i create a awareness for that problem of
a consumption doom-loop, that swallows nation after nation, and often robbing people their base of life.

Back wall of the installation as a stage.
Photo: first meeting of the event „Insights – Marvellous Markets“ with:
Prof. Dr. Ingo Pies
Prof. Dr. Adelheid Biesecker
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Bertram Schefold
Dr. Dambisa Moyo
Prof. Dr. Yunxiang Yan
Prof. Dr. Julian Nida-Rümelin

LETTERS FROM TENTLAND
video stage for dance performance
concept and direction > Helena Waldmann
dramaturgy > Susanne Vincenz
light design > Herbert Cybulska
video stage > Anna Saup und Karina Smigla-Bobinski
composition > Hamid Saeidi, Hans Schiessler und Reza Mojhadas
components > video, tents, white stage screen, projector
space > variable, most: 10 m long x 6 m wide x 7 m high
premiere > January 2005 Fadj Festival, Tehran / Iran
try-outs > Sept 5, 2004 Hannover / Germany and Nov 6+7, 2004 Munich / Germany
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/LETTERS-FROM-TENTLAND
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/LETTERS-FROM-TENTLAND/video.html

LETTERS FROM TENTLAND video stage for dance performance
“Letters from Tentland” is a dance performance and at the same time an intelectual process as well.
After the conception and development phase in autumn 2004, two public performances took place in
Tehran at an important theatre festival in January 2005.The stage performance consists of dance choreographies
and monoloques, framed in video projections and music, that turns into a room of actions
and picture, at the end of the play, while the actresses invite the female part of the audience to conversation
behind the curtain, turns into a communication area.
Avisual methaphor of the tents, in which 6 iranian actresses stay during the whole play, remains effective
on the spoken level as well. In Persian language, „Tchador“ means a shroud that covers the whole
body, which women have to wear due to a decree, and also a tent. If an Iranian woman desires to stay
a while on some public place, she is obligated to use a small tent she takes along all time .
Chador-tents in everyday life, Iran
In the metonymy of the project „Letters From Tentland“ originally titled „Letters From Tehran“, owing to
the Iranian censorship, had to be renamed and thus became more profund and essentially felicious title
involuntarily, these small foldable one-(wo)man-tents would be staged as a symbol of social sytuation.
The play visualize this sytuation not in a documentary way, what would make a performance in Tehran,
because of political reasons not possible, but decodes it in dancing motions, in pictures of impressive
power that melt together with the video projections. After the introducing sequence of photos projected
on the shut curtain showing woman-tents all over the country (among them, at the end of the sequence,
appear several shelter tents of erthquake victims, without the sex separation, as a laconic coment on
the limits of the religion-political controling power) the tents come into sight, with their non transparent,
spooky corporeality, groping with cautious motions prove in a group-choreography their potentialities.
Then, one of the six female performers stepping forward makes in her first monoloque the ambivalence
of being shrouded, the powerlessness and the strength of the invisible, perceptible tangible. This is the
start. This interplay of choreography and programmatic monoloques form the primal rythm. The astonishment
about the silent body language of the tents that returns time and again, mixt with real emotion,
when hands appear from the side slits in tents and behind their net windows faces emerge and then at
the end, as an ambivalent main point the tent really opens.

Apart from the music, connecting the tradional motives with electronic sounds, the video projections by Karina Smigla-
Bobinski and Anna Saup play a leading role. Set mostly contrapuntually , the still pictures as well as the film or animated
sequences appear on the shut curtain or on the static stage situations. As the motion changes with the spoken parts, so
consists the projections repertoire of image and text. They act as aframe producing a topographic-cultural background. They
summon the Iranian world on the stage using pictures of tents or Tehran panorama, enlarged pictures of tent netwindows
and shrouds, interiors of shelter tents or Farsi scripts. This causes a concrete change of the play location. One thing remains
different anyhow: the sequence with the dancing woman that can be seen as a white hazy silhouette. It is illusionary.It bings
in a sketch what is not permitted (a dance, not to wear Tchador), it fetches out volatilely and immaterially, what during the
whole play gets encoded by elaborated symbol language. Consequently this sequence fell victim, in both Tehran‘s performances
to the censors.
„Letters from Tentland“ is more than only a dance performance. Aside from a book edition and a website with its forum
making messages from Iran accessible, there is also video documentation by Karina Smigla-Bobinski, made during the
try-outs before the premiere in Tehran. In this production Smigla-Bobinski focalize only on the theatre recordings. She uses
no other material, no coments, no talks or interviews. Particulary not with the six Iranian actresses, who would run a risk of
political persecutions. Instead of this only a withholding reproduction of shown stage play. The long-shots show the group
chreographies and the whole-stage video projections, the close up views picture the monoloques in the tents, the interactions
between the performers are shown by means of the semi long-shots. This self-restraint sends a clear message: what
counts at this project is the fact of its coming into existence. This existance is a foregather of European and Iranian artists,
threatened by many outer pressures and using these pressures into the creation process, and had its culmination in two
pageants in Iran.

LETTERS FROM TENTLAND - RETURN TO SENDER
The triumphal march of the tents from the first part LETTERS FROM TENTLAND went around the world for
one year, and after 43 performances in 17 countries. The Iranian ‚Letters from Tentland‘ were now overwritten,
answered and sent ‚Return to Sender‘ by exiled Iranian women. So statements were transformed into answers
by return mail.
The bodies of the female performers disappear in the tents, but you can feel their inner tension. In ‚Letters from
Tentland‘, six Iranian actresses capture the audience with their anger, their wishes and dreams, but also their
call for tolerance and cultural difference. In ‚Return to Sender‘, six exiled Iranian women succeed in formulating
a passionate plea for freedom. In this piece as response, the dance is about the supposed liberties of exile. The
women perform in tents which their colleagues form Tehran have left behind, and which both groups use to veil
their desires. For the exiled, the tent is a symbol of their unstable lives and also a piece of home which they cannot
rid themselves of. They move on the dividing line between the two cultures, and heavily bump into both sides.
So the tents whirl around like wind blowing from two directions, they fold and unfold, ripping up like envelopes
with letters from exile tumbling out. Locked-up moving messages that speak of home as a puzzle of memories,
of imminent deportation, of being inbetween, being different. And between the lines we can read how they fight
against fear, how they try not to be controlled by fear.
Same way as the first part consists RETURN TO SENDER of dance choreographies and monoloques, framed in
video projections and music, that turns into a room of actions and picture, at the end of the play, while the actresses
invite the female part of the audience to conversation behind the curtain, turns into a communication area.
Chador-tents in performance
„Where are you from? Who are you? Where is your home? Are you going back?
Four questions like slaps.
(...)“Return to sender“ is not a piece about Iran, it is primarily a play about exile - and the fear. Das großartige
Schlussbild zeigt die Enthüllung. Eine Utopie, vielleicht, auf jeden Fall eine schmerzliche Häutung. The amazing
final image reveals a disclosure. A utopia, maybe, but a painful shedding of skin in any case. In a wild dance the
women throw off their fabric sheathing. And one begins to grasp how difficult it is to liberate oneself form these
tents, this protective layer, this hiding place.

PARADISE
multichannel video installation
components > video, DVD players, projectors, headphones, amplifiers
space > variable
premiere > 2008, State Theater on Gaertnerplatz, Munich / Germany
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/PARADISE
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/PARADISE/video.html

PARADISE multichannel video installation
„Paradise“ is a long-term project. It lives by the abundance and diversity of the participating persons. When Karina Smigla-
Bobinski is travelling, meets repeatedly people who would sit down in front of her camera and relate:
„What do you know about paradise?
What is paradise for you?
And where is it ?“
It has been always the same three questions, but the answers - and that is of course what makes the work so interesting - sound
every time new. So „Paradise“ has grown over the years, to a small encyclopedia, cross-generational and cross-cultural.
Formally, Smigla-Bobinski keeps at the pattern of the „talking head“, as the american news anchors were called in the late 1960s,
for the first time: a talking head on the neck and shoulders, but without the rest of the body. This causes inevitably, a reduction in
the appearance of the person, to what he has to say. Although we also see their facial expressions, however, the body language
remains generally hidden. And that is indeed, for „Paradise“ the right point of view, because this is about metaphysics - in the
hereafter as well as here on earth.
Expulsion from Paradise,
Giovanni di Paolo (1445)
„Paradise“ is not a site-bound video installation, but will be shown in various formats. Originally designed for the six bull‘s-eye
round windows in the foyer of the Munich Staatstheater on Gaertnerplatz, the work was so far at many places, in different projection
solutions and even as a single-channel video with consecutively cut segments. But the best is just for this issue, of course,
the parallel presence of several persons whose pictures you see and whose voices can be heard if you set up a headset.
Smigla-Bobinski scrutinise in „Paradise“ wittingly about two different topics. The „knowledge“ of it, as an over-individual picture,
fed from collective cultural values, confronts the private imagination. Here are the collective values turned into a personal form,
and it gets often biographical. A large number of interviewees place the personal site of the (perfect) happiness in this world.
Sometimes there are concrete or imaginary private enclaves, especially for the elderly people childhood and youth appear there,
and it becomes clear that the original sense of the word - the Persian word „PAIRI-DAEZA“ means „circumscribed area“ - finds
its meaning already in THIS World. Of course, images of otherworldly paradise turn up in the context of different religions. It is
Smigla-Bobinskis concern to gather the differences and similarities from these discourses. In particular, the policies of salvation
are an interest of her: How is the hope of eternal happiness instrumentalized in order to motivate people to extreme actions?
Generally, however, paradise opens a space of encounter. This theme seems to have a great significance for the individual identity.
People get more specifical about the appearance of it, just by talking of it and get closer one another because, though their
analysis is very intimate, as a basic parameter of the „Condition Humaine“, on the other hand, stays generally relevant. Smigla-
Bobinski invites to come closer to these people and to reflect oneself in them. The sharing of the stories always brings one‘s own
ideas and stereotypes in motion and opens the horizon not only for the metaphysical, but also into the social reflections. With
this in mind, it is quite close to revise Jean-Paul Sartre: The Paradise is: the others.

DREAM JOURNEY
1 canal video
music > Laurie Anderson
components > DVD player, projector, sound system
duration > 25 min
space > variable
premiere > 2002 in Scharfrichter Haus, Passau / Germany
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/DREAM-JOURNEY
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/DREAM-JOURNEY/video.html

DREAM JOURNEY 1 canal video
Bright Red by Laurie Anderson
Warner Bros. Records
Dream Journey is a visual poem consisting of movie images, music and eight equally long chapters. The work
has to be seen in a darkened room. In the beginning the wall filling projecion is black, a title appears and fades
away. Then the first image appears: a black and white close shot of an organic surface, that could be skin. The
voices of a woman and a man can be heard, half asleep or in hypnosis, being accompanied by soft electronic
sounds. ‚Did she fall or was she pushed?‘ is the beginning of Laurie Andersons song Bright Red, a poetic story
about desire and threat. With this song the camera zooms back and shows the hand of a men in front of a black
background, the hand clutched into a fist. The hand gets smaller and smaller, until a female hand appears in the
left corner. She approaches the male fist, which slowly begins to open, until she touches the now half opened
hand and the camera begins to zoom in again. The touching line of both hands rotate into the horizontal and
fades into the glimmering horizon of an ocean panorama, the sleek line between water and sky. With this subtle
transition the music changes, this has the effect of being pulled into another journey.
Dream Journey is a perfectly balanced dialog of music and image – but still its synaesthesia evolved late, since
Karina Smigla-Bobinski found Laurie Andersons music when she was cutting the video images. Andersons
word-music, sung with this unique cold and at the same time sensual voice over elegance electronic sounds,
sings of mysterious beauty in a aural endless space. Dreaming is central in the album Bright Red: surreal images
evolve into a apocalyptic metaphor or cryptic hints – just like the video frequencies – that pop up from memory
and therefor become more impressive.
Smigla-Bobinskis video images form a fascinating visual equivalent to Andersons music, the videos are slowed
down and carried away, and have clear signs of the surreal. This effect is created by the irritating stopping and
doubling of the hand sequences, the slight fuzziness or the pale light in the ocean images. The slowness and
krass reduction of the videos makes them inner or mental images, that are set aside from normal day rhythms.
The whole composition of Dream Journey is laied out like a wave movement. In both the beginning and the end
the hands in front of a black background mark the appearance and disappearance, latter being underlined by
the final motive of the swelling light. But this life sign of the wake body awareness reappears at two stages of the
movie: In one of the two a hand carries a suitcase, the other shows to sets of hands holding a wallet, that holds
the picture of a man carrying a small girl. The man is walking away while the girl looks back into the camera –
Images of a goodbye or the beginning of a journey.

It is also the memory of such a journey. And inbetween these hand sequences, where the fingers are well rooted into
realty, lies water. In form of the ocean sequence, or the water tank, in which red paint drops appear and disolve into
colour clouds, or the glass ball that is pushed under the surface and reflects in its core the world outside the water
upsidedown, like in a fisheye. Or in the form of sequences, where water is being permeated with air and light – The
element is used in Dream Journey as a transcendental medium of movement and change. To grasp it with mere
hands is just as impossible as the attempt to transport the dream journeys of the night into the day consciousness.

SEE AND BE SCENE
video stage for dance performance
regie > Helena Waldmann
video stage > Karina Smigla-Bobinski
live music > Arik Hayut
couture > Alba D‘Urbano
components > video, DVD player, projectors
dimensions > 6 m long x 2 m wide
premiere > 2000, Berliner Festspiele - Haus der Deutschen Wirtschaft, Berlin / Germany
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/SEE-AND-BE-SCENE
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/SEE-AND-BE-SCENE/video.html

SEE AND BE SCENE video stage for dance performance
Set up at Haus der Deutschen Wirtschaft BDI in Berlin / Germany
The play stage is build on the principle of a sandwich. A 16 meter long tablecatwalk,
above it a projection screen (16x8 m) in 6 meters hight. The audience
sits at the catwalk-table, close together as during a banquet. On the catwalk act
three japanese table dancers whose nearness does not allow the normal view
to see them whole. Their bodies appear like under hand lens, enlarged through
the intimacy.
This, mixt with fantasies appear as a projection up over the heads of the dancers
and the audience. Instead of place setting a spectator finds a small hand mirror,
in which he can first see his own face in a strange perspective. The mirror is also
a key to decipher the portent projected by the video artist onto the screen over
the catwalk. Words „Appear Here“ announce a fugitive appearance . It consists
of waterdrops, each one with a face reflected inside it, waiting with fright for
its bursting, when one waterdrop gets nudged from an other, and they solve
themself in a silent rill.
This theather play, inspired by the cult roman „Glamorama“ by Bret Easton Ellis
shows everything as only staging: the own body, the enviroment. Each detail is
disclosed in a shameless directness, each emotion particularise. And yet in this
apparent openness, any reflective moment is missing: the truth, which neither
the reader of the roman nor the audience member at the play can experience.
The eye traped in a medial sight misses all that aims the enlightenment, knowing
distance. The dancers wear the skin naked, not their own but the one of the artist
Alba D‘Urbano, a copy printed on the clothing. The show is accompanied by the
percussionist Arik Hayut.

Dinner for everyone by Antje Schmelcher, Die Welt
Fashion is terror. That is the now well known conclusion of Bret Easton Ellis‘ novel „Glamorama“, in which models
symbolically turn out to be terrorists. The terror of the surface can hit anyone. Even someone who is trying to resist
the dictate of fashion, has to be clothed in something. And that is where the net of lust and lies begins. Helena Waldmann,
known for her associative staging of sound, light and spacial art, has found new images for Easton Ellis‘ novel.
As if celebrating a lord‘s supper of vanity, she places her audience around a banquet like fashion runway in the atrium
at the Haus der Deutschen Wirtschaft.
Instead of cutlery the viewer has a mirror, in which, leaned forward, he can see his slightly loosely hanging face flesh
from a grotesque angle. This mirror is also the key to deciphering the portent, that video artist Karina Smigla-Bobinski
is projecting onto the screen above the runway. „Appear here“ is advertising the appearance, its letters as fleeting
as its form. These are water drops, reflecting a face, that resembles the horror of a death row prisoner awaiting the
burst. Is it hit by anther drop, they dissolve into a long silent trickle.
The dissolution of the outer shell of the dancers is just as violent, as they walk in white pleated kimonos over the
runway to the buzzing and knocking measures by the percussionist artist Arik Hayut. Strangely bending their bodies
provocatingly and libidinously towards the audience, until, with a sudden handle of the neck, they seem to hang
themselves in the robes. No Munchhausen trick to rescue themselves, but an image of dying angels, trying to peel
themselves out of their shells. Underneath appears a nudeness, which with the painted genitalia on the costumes
by designer Alba D‘Urbano only seems to be natural. Just as natural as the nudeness staged as „real“ by everyday
media.
Waldmann shows how false and destructive this intimacy is by the continued skinning of the dancers. At the end the
last bits of skin are carried by the women in knotted bundles on the stage. The horror of the audience is only seemingly
relieved in a japanese tea ceremony. Humble the women kneel down in front of the viewers, smilingly handing
them a cup of tea. The step from intimacy to the destruction of the body is a small one: enormous needles, projected
above the stage, reed with a merciless time into the women‘s smiles. Fashion just is the most flattering kind of terror.

WORMHOLE
video installation in public space
components > steel construction, glass, video, monitor, dvd player
dimensions > 1 m diameter x 1,10 m high
premiere > 2008, Busan Biennale, Busan / Süd Korea
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/WORMHOLE
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/WORMHOLE/video.html

WORMHOLE video installation in public space
The theme of the 2008 Busan Biennale, „Expenditure“, is based on
Georges Bataille‘s notions of consumption and excess as principle
agents of the creative process, hence irony and paradox become key
elements in this process. This is not a calculated approach to reason
but an immeasurable area, one that is created via the internal experience
without any guarantee of a result or conclusion. “Voyage without
Boundaries „ is an exhibition that explores Bataille‘s notion of surplus
and energy as an agent of the creative process, which is not easily understood
or defined.
Flammarions Holzstich – L’atmosphère, Paris 1888,
illustration for “La forme du ciel” im Kapitel “Le jour”.
Sea Art Festival as a part of 2008 Busan Biennale runs under the title
„Voyage without boundaries“. The title symbolizes a journey towards
some unknown space. Modern concepts of travel are encapsulated in
a linear Euclidean space: one that has a concrete beginning and end.
Great ocean voyages of the past to today‘s travel in our global village
follow routes based in some concept of space starting from some beginning
to some end point. As much as Euclidean concepts have been
forced to change with discoveries in non- Euclidean geometry, so space
and knowledge are not arrived at by a linear and defined journey, but
by experiential observation.
Intellectual voyages that discovered the lands of the non-linear and
non-Euclidean have validated the artistic voyage in a unique way. This
new voyage allows us to transcend those epic voyages of the past and
their historic inevitabilities of exploitation and rule. „Voyage without
Boundaries“ is an artistic exploration that goes beyond the conventional
wisdom of time and space, and allows us to form voyages of our
own that have no defined inevitabilities.
This work aims to unite the examination of the wisdom of time and
space and idea of global village. But it also includes the fears, wishes
and fantasies. In this work are 3 themes linked: wormholes, mandalas
and the story of the hollow and inhabited earth, which was considered
a scientific theory until the 19th century.

The wormhole is a metapher which comes from the image of a worm, bitting
his way right through an apple. A wormhole therefore connects 2 sides of 1
space, with a tunnel. 2 places that lie on 2 different sides of the earth (e.g.
Busan - NYC)and geographically are far away from each other, seen to converge
through modern technology and globalisation, just as through a wormhole
between them exists. I would like to create such wormhole with my work.
Through the hole, which starts in Busan, you can see other cities all over the
world, their houses and people, who also look through it. You would also be
able to see the sky and therefore into the infinity, the cosmos. It is a connection
between two cities but further more it is also a connection of the infinity
lying on both sides of the world. There is no beginning and no ending, just two
perspectives. Travelling with the means of wormholes, although theoretically
possible, is going to remain a dream. The surplus of energy needed will probably
never be avaible.
The word mandala means circle, ring or plate. Originally the mandala was used
to illustrate the world. Nowadays it is used to express something mental into
something visual. The implementation is said to guide to an higher mental
concentration. The Ego, in the buddhist sence, the origin of all suffering, is to
be overcome and finally all earthly and material thinking exceeded. Bataill was
fascinated by the buddhist ideas. The order of houses, trees etc. are to remind
of such mandalas and their centralised order.
Top: graphical illustration of a wormhole
Bottom: visualization of a wormhole between
Busan and New York
The theory of the hollow earth was scientifically approved until 19th century
and had many great representatives like Edmund Halley (17TH century) from
the Royal Society of Science. The Theory said, that the earth is hollow and that
there were manholes lying at the poles. Many tried to find there manholes, there
are several travellreports and articles abouts them. Some claimed to have
reached the middle of the earth, some place with its own sun.
The place was said to be inhibited by people living on an higher step of civilisation.
This ideal of a society is similar to our modell of a global village or
to the new better society in terms of Bataille...or it could be even one of his
experiments.
Todays search after the life in space is a continuation of this yearning.

ROUTES
1-channel video
components > DVD player, sound system
sound > SWOD
premiere > 2002, Maximilianforum - Open Art Munich / Germany
Text & images > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/ROUTES
Videos > www.smigla-bobinski.com/english/works/ROUTES/video.html

ROUTES 1-channel video
Not only does the question of humankind and the human condition with its unique form of being, its interactional
forms and necessities, its weaknesses and strengths occupy a central thematic focus in art, but also in philosophical
discourse. The artist‘s personal artistic goal is to articulate this philosophic discourse not in words and concepts but
works of art. Therefore one could draw a parallel conclusion that her work is dialectical art, since it is through its toand
fro movement between the artist and audience, mediated, contained, guided by an appropriate and adequate
medium, that this momentum originally develops and is developed.
In philosophy „dialectical“ refers to the enrichment of ideational content and this mutually beneficially altering process
which is occurs by being embedded in ever more complex, varying application contexts. Incrementally comprehensive
understanding takes place when this process is originally perceived and the different aspects, which although
apparently antithetical, unified (conflated) in a new whole, a synthesis constituted by these very differences, united
in and through its dynamic tension.
Another dialectical process is revealed when the creative process itself is consciously studied: the artist selects an insight,
a problem, a situation from its environmental embedding. This „extraction“ becomes a new idea, a new thought,
which in the artistic process of selection experiences alteration and which experience in turn alters its context, that is
to say: is released as a new, efficacious thought into the world. This is how art alters the world in mirroring it.
The „Routes“ demonstrates how „single-ular“ an individual qua single drop is. Because the drops are in motion, the
faces they represent and reflect alter themselves and this speaks to a kind of plurality in singularity, perhaps the
different rolls lived in daily life. This „single-ular“ individual is nevertheless a part of society, for there flow several,
indeed many drops.
When one carefully observes these drops, it becomes evident that the faces in the several other, the many drops are
actually all one and the same face, which underscores the singularity and particularity, the „single-ness“ of the many.
Since however not all drops flow at the same pace, the singular, the individual timing of each individual is addressed.
Observing this installation engages, involves the observer and enable him to observe and thus comprehend the dialectical
movement between the individual and society, the single and the many, back through the observation and in
the process of observation. This observation is a kind of seduction, because it moves thinking and feeling into a particular
direction. The discovery of this direction, this dialectical movement and dynamic tension does not take place in
the intellect, but in and through the evocation of feelings, spontaneous associations and as such it remains preverbal.

Maximal momentum, vivacity, approximation and evocation of all that is alive is achieved
through Karina Smigla- Bobinski‘s interactive video installations, which from Socrates
to Hegel, Heidegger to Sartre was and remains a prerequisite for philosophy. On
the other hand, installations by their very nature are ephemeral and illustrate the character
of life in its ultimate dialectical antithesis: death. To grasp and enjoy the essential,
the eternal in art as in philosophy means that we comprehend its ability to communicate
the complex interplay between becoming, being and dissolving as a dialectical process
and not a final result.

EXHIBIT PLACES
selection
> biennals
2 0 1 5
Media Art Biennale WRO (Poland)
2 0 1 2
ZERO1 BIENNIAL / Silicon Valley (US)
2 0 0 9
LOOP - VideoArtBiennial / Barcelona (Spain)
2 0 0 8
Busan Biennial / Busan (Korea)
2 0 0 5
Biennale di Venecia, Arsenale (Italy)
> exibitions
2 0 1 7
OMSI MUSEUM / Portland (USA)
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil / Brasilia City (Brazil)
Le Tetris / Le Havre (France)
Frost Museum of Science / Miami (USA)
KIKK Festival / Namur (Belgium)
L‘Ososphere Festival / Straßburg (France)
Pop-Up Museum / San Diego (USA)
VIA Festival / Maubeuge (France)
FILE at SESI Art Gallery / Vitoria (Brazil)
Mois Multi Festival / Quebec (Canada)
Maintenant Festival / Rennes (France)
2 0 1 6
Filmuniversität Babelsberg / Berlin (Germany)
IPARK Museum of Art / Sowon (Korea)
Science Gallery / Dublin (Ireland)
Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery / Nottingham (UK)
Singapore Art Museum (Singapore)
NV Zebrastraat / Gent (Belgium)
Grande Halle de la Villette / Paris (France)
FILE Electronic Language Int. Festival / São Paulo (Brazil)
ZiF Center for Interdisciplinary Research / Bielefeld (Germany)
VIA FESTIVAL / Maubeuge (France)
The Game Science Center / Berin (Germany)
Maison des Arts de Créteil / Paris (France)
2 0 1 5
Kunsthalle an Hamburger Platz / Berlin (Germany)
The Lowry / Manchester - Salford Media City (UK)
WRO Media Art Biennale / Wroclaw (Poland)
New Media Gallery / New Westminster, Vancouver (Canada)
FIBER - Interdisciplinary Festival / Amsterdam (Netherlands)
CURRENTS - International New Media Festival / Santa Fe (USA)
SpeculumArtium - New Media Art Festival / Trbovlje (Slovenia)
Gallery of Artists, BBK / Munich (Germany)
A MAZE Festival / Berlin (Germany)
International Kinetic Art Exhibition InMOTION / Lodz (Poland)
Polish Institute / Berlin (Germany)
28. Filmwinter - Festival for Expanded Media / Stuttgart (Germany)
2 0 1 4
FILE – Electronic Language Int. Festival, Curitiba (Brazil)
Microwave International New Media Arts Festival, Hong Kong (China)
FILE – Electronic Language Int. Festival, São Paulo (Brazil)
PDC Participatory Design Conference, Windhoek (Namibia)
FILE – Electronic Language Int. Festival, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
ROBOT – Digital Paths Into Music And Arts Festival, Bologna (Italy)
FILE – Electronic Language Int. Festival, Belo Horizonte (Brazil)
2 0 1 3
MoTA Museum of Transitory Art in Ljubljana (Slovenia)
SONICA Festival of Transitory Art (Slovenia)
Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw (Poland)
MSGSÜ Tophane-i Amire Culture and Arts Center in Istanbul (Turkey)
GARAGE Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow (Russia)
KIBLA Portal in Maribor (Slovenia)
TUFA Culture & Communication Centre in Trier (Germany)
2 0 1 2
AltArt Foundation / Cluj-Napoca (Romania)
PLAY - Centro Cultural Universitario / Corrientes (Argentina)
FACT Foundation for Art and Creative Technology / Liverpool (UK)
FILE Festival / Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
2 0 1 1
IV Festival of Video Art / Camaguey (Cuba)
FAD – Festival de Arte Digital / Belo Horizonte (Brazil)
COP17 / Durban (South Africa)
FILE – Electronic Language Int. Festival / São Paulo (Brazil)
4 Elemente +1 - Pilotraum01 / Munich (Germany)
Videoarte en mOvimiento / Lima (Peru)
2 0 1 0
“Cultures of Economics”, Radialsystem / Berlin (Germany)
HEP / Geneva (Schweiz) / Haukijärvi (Finland) / Cannes (France)
Cultural Center Sapinho Gonçalves / Benedita (Portugal)
QUERY in situ and online art project - München & Web
Hermannshof / Hannover
2 0 0 9
Jose Malhoa Museum - State Museum / Caldas da Rainha (Portugal)
Paradise Loung - Galerie im Höhmannhaus / Augsburg (Germany)
QUERY in situ and online art project - Munich (Germany) & www
Optica Festival / Córdoba (Spain) / Paris (France)
Sguardi Sonori Festival of Media and Time Based Art - Rom and Benevento (Italy)
Festinova - International Festival of Contemporary Art / Georgia
International Videoart Contest / Landau (Germany)

Ceramic Museum - State Museum / Caldas da Rainha (Portugal)
Int. VideoArtShow / Valladolid (Spain) / Rom (Italy)
2 0 0 8
Museo al Aire Libre / Mérida (Mexiko)
Lange Nacht der Museen / Stuttgart (Germany)
Videoakt - International Videoart Show / GlogauAIR / Berlin (Germany)
Staatstheater am Gaertnerplatz / München (Germany)
2 0 0 7
Int. Exhibition of Video Art and Cinema / Lecce (Italien)
2 0 0 6
Laznia / Krakau (Polen)
2 0 0 5
Bangkok University Gallery / Bangkok (Thailand)
Galeria Edgar Neville / Valencia (Spain)
Ein Zentrum in der Peripherie, Sudhaus / Tübingen (Germany)
2 0 0 4
‚Zwischenwasser‘‘/ Bad Aibling (Germany)
Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst / Bremen (Germany)
Subterraneale / Munich (Germany)
2 0 0 3
‚‘IMPARK#1‘‘/ Olympia Park Munich (Germany)
The 12 th Bremen Award for Video Art 2003 (Germany)
2 0 0 2
Swiis Re Germany / Unterfoehring (Germany)
Scharfrichter Haus / Passau (Germany)
Kunst Park Ost / Munich (Germany)
2 0 0 1
arte TV / www.arte.de / Strasburg (Germany)
Kunst Park Ost / Munich (Germany)
2 0 0 0
Maximilianforum / Open Art / Munich (Germany)
> performances - video stege
2 0 0 6
Festival International de las Artes, Salamanca (Spain)
Théâtre Grammont, Festival Montpellier Danse (France)
Festival Infant, Novi Sad (Serbia)
Göteborg Dance & Theatre Festival (Sweden)
Kunstfest Weimar (Germany)
Radialsystem Berlin (Germany)
Teo Otto Theater Remscheid (Germany)
Tafelhalle Nürnberg (Germany)
Grand Théâtre de la Ville Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Tanzplattform Deutschland, Theaterhaus Stuttgart (Germany)
Bregenzer Frühling, Festspielhaus (Austria)
Posthof Linz (Austria)
Fundateneofestival Caracas (Venezuela)
Alaz De La Danza Teatro Bolivar Quito (Ecuador)
2 0 0 5
Fadjr-Festival, Dramatic Arts Center Tehran (Iran)
Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele (Germany)
Julidans Festival, Amsterdam (Netherlands)
ImPuls Tanz, Wien (Austria)
Biennale di Venecia (Italy)
Theaterspektakel, Zürich (Switzerland)
Teatro Sesc Anchieta, São Paulo (Brazil)
Biennale nationale de la danse, Vitry (Frankreich)
Seoul Performing Arts Festival (Korea)
Schaubühne, Berlin (Germany)
Tanzhaus, Düsseldorf (Germany)
International Theaterfestival OWL Bielefeld (Germany)
Mousonturm, Frankfurt/Main (Germany)
Bühne im Hof, St. Pölten (Austria)
Burghof in Lörrach (Germany)
Kulturamt, Idar Oberstein (Germany)
Theater, Pfalzbau in Ludwigshafen (Germany)
2 0 0 4
Dance 2004, Haus der Kunst, München (Germany)
2 0 0 1
Muffathalle / Munich (Germany)
2 0 0 0
Berliner Festspiele (Germany)
Podewill, Berlin (Germany)
Mousonturm -Frankfurt Zweitausend, Frankfurt/M (Germany)
Wünschenrouten - Machtart Theater (Germany)
KunstBunker Tumulka, Munich (Germany)
2 0 0 7
GoDown Art Center Nairobi (Kenya)
Staatstheater Oldenburg (Germany)
Creative Forum Alexandria (Egypt)
Gomhoriya-Theater Cairo (Egypt)
Theater im Pfalzbau Ludwigshafen (Germany)
Contemporary Dance Festival, Ramallah
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian Lisbon (Portugal)
4. National Theatre Festival Kabul (Afghanistan)
National School of Drama Dehli (India)
Ranga Shankara Theatre, Bangalore (India)
Waters Edge, Colombo (Sri Lanka)
Cultural and Congress Centre, Ljubljana (Slovenia)
Theaterhaus Jena (Germany)

Karina Smigla-Bobinski lives and works as a freelance
artist in Munich and Berlin in Germany. She studied
painting and visual communication at the Academy
of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland and Munich, Germany.
She works as an intermedia artist with analogue
and digital media. She produces and collaborates on
projects ranging from interactive and mixed reality
art in form of installations, objects, in-situ&onlineart-projects,
art interventions and multimedia physical
theatre performances, to digital and traditional
painting, analogue interactive installations or kinetic
sculptures. Her works has been shown in 36 countries
on 5 continents at festivals, galleries and museums
including GARAGE Center for Contemporary
Culture in Moscow, ZERO1 Biennial in Silicon Valley,
FILE Electronic Language International Festival in
São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, FACT Foundation for
Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool, Busan Biennale,
Bangkok University Gallery, Haus der Kunst
in Munich, and Biennale di Venezia - Arsenale, Venice
> www.smigla-bobinski.com