Hörner/Antlfinger (Ute Hörner & Mathias Antlfinger) are Professors of Media Arts at Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM) and are collaborating as an artist couple. Founder of XObjectSpace – a space for New Media in the mid-90’s. Teachers at different art institutes, currently running Transmedialer Raum – a Laboratory for Art and Research at KHM since 2009.
Their projects have been widely exhibited internationally, such as Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg; Prix Ars Electronica 2012, Linz; Goethe-Institut Montreal; National Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei; Shedhalle, Zürich; Transmediale, Berlin; Visual Arts Projects Istanbul 2010, European Capital of Culture; Museum Ludwig, Köln.
As part of the dialogue between human and non-human existences in the “art system” and the “everything-else system,” since the 1990s Hörner/Antlfinger offer critical perspectives on the technologization of our world. Their spatial narrations deal with interacting systems – of individuals and computers, of cities and their inhabitants, of animals that are loved and animals that are eaten.
The possible formats of their works range from sculpture and installation to video or code. Language often provides the starting material. “We work with dialogues and interviews in which we address societal themes on the basis of personal experience. Moreover, much of our work is site-specific”.
Discrete Farms
In the course of an artistic partnership of more than twenty years, we have repeatedly examined the relationships between human beings, animals and machines. The constructions behind the distinctions between human and non-human agents, and equally between domestic animals and ones used for human benefit, provided the starting point for a major project we developed in 2012 at the Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst in Oldenburg, a city that is situated in the heartland of industrial livestock farming in Germany. The research for that previous project called for closer examination of the discourses current in the still young field of human-animal studies.
Supplemented by a brief overview of related works, we will investigate this topic – from a historical perspective as well.
SUGGESTED BOOKS
Interesting questions / statements
Are we trapped in the cybernetic paradigm?
What prevents us from transferring theoretical Insights into daily life practice?
Non human animals are also just human animals.