Anton Markus Pasing
Photography in the Age of Forgetting
Digital space is full of images of a reality, and in the realm of photography they always portray the past. Digital space is just one part of that reality which we regard as physical reality. By no means is it the opposite of reality. Nowadays millions of cameras scan our faces and bodies almost autonomously, compare and archive them – and we will never see any of this. Mobile cameras on vehicles generate a sense of belonging to a physical-geographic position.
Google Street View produces artefacts of a reality the may it may have happened in part at some time. We meet people from our past or even from our future. The faces are carefully made unreadable, but they still yield information. Only for a moment are these mask-like images of our presence an original on the street. What we see is our shadowy alter ego, the mirror image of a digital storage of life, which looks frozen, but still does not completely discard its identity. The next scan is needed to generate a temporal differentiation within the medium and thus its own past. The future of these photos is indeterminate. It can happen that we see the same person twice on one picture or six times in succession on the same street from different perspectives.
Nothing seems impossible in the mix of algorithms. Thanks to the environmental context, it is possible for us to let the faces take effect as objects in our internal images. Façades, vehicles, clothing and so on make it easier for us to apply these abilities. The compression artefacts that are sometimes visible make the link to a technical reality, which is the last bridge to a construction of realty. Their number and ostensible similarity only seem to produce a system of indistinguishable particles. When we zoom in closer, recognizability is reduced at first until it becomes a new, specific dimension of the surface and its expression. New creatures, hybrids of the past and the future. Perhaps long dead and forgotten, but still present. Sometimes we recognize mask-like or distorted identities, sometimes it seems to be an old friend.
When the juxtaposition of faces is liberated from the context, no place can be recognized, there is no hint of the street, we have no idea of the country in which the photo was made. All are equal here, beyond race and religion. And despite all this, every fragment of a portrait constitutes a visual character distinct from all others. We do not know whether the true expression of this life becomes manifest here for the first time, or whether it has always been and still remains inscrutably existent. We are looking into a two-dimensional world-in-between in which we can lose ourselves as bodies until we, too, are forgotten. Ghosts. Faces without a face. Or with a new face for a new future with a two-dimensional existence.
Anton Markus Pasing
Digital space is full of images of a reality, and in the realm of photography they always portray the past. Digital space is just one part of that reality which we regard as physical reality. By no means is it the opposite of reality. Nowadays millions of cameras scan our faces and bodies almost autonomously, compare and archive them – and we will never see any of this. Mobile cameras on vehicles generate a sense of belonging to a physical-geographic position.
Google Street View produces artefacts of a reality the may it may have happened in part at some time. We meet people from our past or even from our future. The faces are carefully made unreadable, but they still yield information. Only for a moment are these mask-like images of our presence an original on the street. What we see is our shadowy alter ego, the mirror image of a digital storage of life, which looks frozen, but still does not completely discard its identity. The next scan is needed to generate a temporal differentiation within the medium and thus its own past. The future of these photos is indeterminate. It can happen that we see the same person twice on one picture or six times in succession on the same street from different perspectives.
Nothing seems impossible in the mix of algorithms. Thanks to the environmental context, it is possible for us to let the faces take effect as objects in our internal images. Façades, vehicles, clothing and so on make it easier for us to apply these abilities. The compression artefacts that are sometimes visible make the link to a technical reality, which is the last bridge to a construction of realty. Their number and ostensible similarity only seem to produce a system of indistinguishable particles. When we zoom in closer, recognizability is reduced at first until it becomes a new, specific dimension of the surface and its expression. New creatures, hybrids of the past and the future. Perhaps long dead and forgotten, but still present. Sometimes we recognize mask-like or distorted identities, sometimes it seems to be an old friend.
When the juxtaposition of faces is liberated from the context, no place can be recognized, there is no hint of the street, we have no idea of the country in which the photo was made. All are equal here, beyond race and religion. And despite all this, every fragment of a portrait constitutes a visual character distinct from all others. We do not know whether the true expression of this life becomes manifest here for the first time, or whether it has always been and still remains inscrutably existent. We are looking into a two-dimensional world-in-between in which we can lose ourselves as bodies until we, too, are forgotten. Ghosts. Faces without a face. Or with a new face for a new future with a two-dimensional existence.
Anton Markus Pasing
Anton Markus Pasing/ biography
(* 6. März 1962 in Greven) ist ein deutscher Architekt und Künstler.
Anton Markus Pasing erhielt sein Diplom im Jahre 1989 an der Muenster School of Architecture. Nach einem Zweitstudium an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf für „Integration Bildende Kunst und Architektur“ wurde er 1991 zum Meisterschüler von Oswald Mathias Ungers ernannt. Er studierte an der Kunstakademie Kunstgeschichte, Soziologie und Philosophie in den Nebenfächern und hatte neben Ungers auch Laurids Ortner und Ernst Kasper als Lehrer.
Anton Markus Pasing ist Gründer des Büros „remote-controlled“, das seit 1994 in Münster etabliert ist.
Nach Lehraufträgen an der Universität Innsbruck (Österreich) am Lehrstuhl für Raumgestaltung und an der „Muenster School of Architecture“ war er von 1994 bis 2001 künstlerisch-wissenschaftlicher Assistent am Lehrstuhl für Gebäudelehre und Entwerfen von Klaus Kada an der RWTH Aachen.
Nach einem Stipendium der Plus-Min Stichting (Stiftung für Bildende Kunst und Architektur) in den Niederlanden im Jahre 1996 erhielt er im Jahre 1999 das Villa Massimo Stipendium der Bundesregierung in Rom.
Ebenfalls im Jahre 1999 erhielt er den Förderpreis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen in der Sparte Architektur, Städtebau und Design.
Nach einjähriger Tätigkeit als Leiter der Design- und Architekturabteilung einer Internetfirma (welche Internetfirma?)für die Erstellung einer interaktiven Onlinewelt (welche onlinewelt) in Hamburg wurde er 2001/2002 als Gastprofessor an die Architekturfakultät der Technischen Universität Darmstadt als Gastprofessor für „Experimentelles Gestalten mit neuen Medien“ berufen. Im gleichen Jahr nahm er eine Gastprofessur für „Simulation“ an der Muthesius-Hochschule für Kunst und Gestaltung in Kiel an.
Im Jahre 2002 begann er eine Tätigkeit als freier Illustrator für die Wochenzeitung „Die Zeit“ in Hamburg und veröffentlichte mit Karin Damrau das Buch „Unschärferelationen“ im Nelte Verlag.
Seit 2003 ist er ordentlicher Professor an der HSD Hochschule Düsseldorf, PBSA Peter Behrens School of Arts, Fachbereich Architektur, für „Entwerfen und Typologie der Bauformen sowie deren Darstellungen“.
Von 2006 bis 2016 war er „Visiting Professor“ an der Texas A&M University in den USA (College Station) für „Visual Studies“ am Department „Visualization“.
Seine Projekte wurden u. a. im NAI (Niederländisches Architektur-Institut) in Rotterdam, in der Galerie Aedes Berlin, auf der Architekturbiennale Venedig, auf der 1st. International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam sowie in der Neuen Sammlung in München und beim Dortmunder Kunstverein gezeigt. Weitere Ausstellungen in Korea und den USA folgten bis heute.
2004-2007 war er als wissenschaftlicher Direktor des MKI (Institute for Media, Kommunication and Information) in Düsseldorf tätig.
2010 wurde er für den „Smart Furture Award“ nominiert und gewann 2016 den KROB First Preis für „Best Digital/Hybrid Media“. USA
2019 gewann er den 1. Preis des Welt Architektur Festivals in Amsterdam für die beste digitale Zeichnung und ging als “Overall winner“ aller Darstellungskategorien hervor. 2020 stellt er zum ersten Mal Arbeiten im “Sir John Soane Museum“ in London aus.
2022 gewann er erneut den 1. Preis für digitale Darstellung und wird seine Arbeit “The wall“ im Februar 2023 ebenfalls im “Sir John SoaneMuseum“ in London zeigen dürfen.
Die meisten Projekte des Büros bis zum Jahr 2002 wurden in den Publikationen „remote-controlled architecture“ und „16:9_remote-controlled II“ veröffentlicht, 2014 folgte das Buch: „ Eutopia II: non-linear multiple hybrid solutions“ welches im Revolver Verlag Berlin erschienen ist.
Aktuellere Projekte finden sich in zahlreichen Publikationen wie z.B. Magazine und Zeitschriften und Internet Publikationen.