Das stets sich selbst an den Füssen klebt

So should we save absence or emptiness?

Jean Baudrillard

August / September 2013 Message Salon downtown, Perla Mode Esther Eppstein

Ruth Erdt Which continually sticks itself to its feet

Von Esther Eppstein

Zurich artist and photographer Ruth Erdt has realised several exhibitions at message salon since 1996. The current exhibition, too, ‘Das stets sich selbst an den Füssen klebt’ (Which continually sticks itself to its feet) came about thanks to an invitation from message salon to present a new work before the Perla-Mode building is demolished. In the ground floor and basement rooms of Perla-Mode Ruth Erdt shows a multimedia installation that revolves around ideas of memory, internal images and the nature of photography.

Ruth Erdt’s engagement with the medium of photography is based on 30 years of activity photographing the generation that directly experienced and addressed the shift from analogue to digital photography and the associated transformation of how we deal with images. The artist challenges pictures per se, and how the flood of digital images effects how we relate to recording or categorising images in relation to memory. Have new technical means and their ubiquity already stifled our ability to directly perceive experience here and now; is it already redefined? What future awaits a society that stores its visual memory and its history in cyberspace?

Ruth Erdt ’s photography received widespread public recognition for, amongst others, the exhibition ‘Die Lügner’ (The Liars) at the Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, a fictionalised photo-installation of her own family and their surroundings. Perception is not always exactly what is visible in her work. A key aspect of her photography is fiction and manipulation, be that technical or through editing. Ruths Erdt’s photography and the selections she makes conjure the viewer’s own internal images and stir a selective, individual memory. Esther Eppstein

«Die Behauptung», Foto-Zine, 28 pages, s/w, message salon 2013.