June 2001
Doug Aitkin
Georg Winter
b. 1962 Biberach, D, lives in Stuttgart, D
Mitsubishi monogatari, 2001
UCS professional film set, wood, different materials,
173 x 173 x 53,1 cmGeorg Winter translates the (Japanese, Buddhist) concept "Ukiyo" with the sentence: attentiveness to the moment overcomes sadness about the passage of time. In the 90s, Ukiyo Camera Systems developed a broad range of instruments - various types of still camera as well as devices relating to video, film and TV technology -, which when used expand the conventional notion of media towards fundamental orientation questions - understood spatially and intellectually. Monogatari is the Japanese word for 'story'.
The sculpture consists of a professional film camera, of the kind that is used for calm, static shots in film work because of its dimensions and its weight. The 'tatami' that is also part of the work is a classical Japanese floor mat. The work relates to one of the most important Japanese film-makers, Yasujiro Ozu. He made over thirty films between 1927 and 1962, though in the West he is only well received and highly esteemed by film buffs.
Georg Winter calls its sculpture Mitsubishi monogatari a "practice unit". With it he is providing Daimlerwith a tool that is intended to instruct colleagues who are used to working with concepts like mobility and speed to try out strategies of withdrawal and de-potentiation actively. Anyone who sits or lies down on a tatami mat and uses the camera as a medium for experiencing and reflecting about his or her attitude and location in the space is actively part of a processually aimed concept of sculpture and also has a sense of being part of commercially and aesthetically based intercultural processes.
Georg Winter has been working on a cultural concept that is etymologically based, based on the history of language, in other words, in the form of designs for experiments and field research programmes, and also complex investigations of concepts of quality and values in the production of art and culture.
Measure/Maßnahme (Otsu/Atsuta), 2001
wood-cut on translucent paper,
60 x 229 cm
Remain composed (Otsu/Atsuta), 2001
wood-cut on translucent paper,
49,8 x 292,7 cm
Georg Winter has been working on a cultural concept that is entymologically based, based on the history of language, in the form of designs for experiments and field research programmes, and also complex investigations of concepts of quality and values in the production of art and culture. In Georg Winter's concept of plasticity, a major role is played by graphic cycles and self-designed printed material like brochures, cards and leaflets, texts and public postal door-to-door deliveries. The two woodcuts called Measure/Massnahme and Remain composed take up intellectual aspects of the sculpture Mitsubishi monogatari, concretize them or expand them in the direction of fundamental ontological questions.
One sheet shows both the film camera and the floor mat as a horizontal line, and the size of the sheet reflects the actual dimensions of the sculpture. The possible positions that can be taken up by the user are named in the centre of the sheet: "sitting - lying - sleeping position - basic position - camera man lying on the mat". The second sheet shows a horizontal line, held by a hand on the right- and left-hand sides.
The thirty films in the Yashiro Ozu's oeuvre are identified by title; the running time of each film is calculated as Japanese, German and English units of length. Both woodcuts deal in a complementary way with the categories of space, time and movement, of measurements and relationships, all central to Georg Winter's sculptural concept. The 'translations' that the artist undertakes in pictorial and aesthetic terms represent the 'translation aids' that his sculptures offer in the context of operating and production systems, when their offer to be used actively is taken seriously.
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