Mediterranes Haus mit Meer im Hintergrund 2021
installation, dimensions variable
MDF, varnished
potted plants
generative model (GAN) and landscape generator website via QR code (remoteness, insularity, difficult topography)
silkscreen print on paper
Inspired by various Zoom meetings, Johanna Käthe Michel is interested in the generic virtual backgrounds that users can select when their own four walls are not to be shared with all other meeting participants. What does it mean when the professional spreads to the private during the still ongoing home office phase? The artist recreated various backgrounds from the „office“ category and arranged them with plants from the UdK working spaces - where they were left behind in the last months. Johanna Käthe Michel reactivates an unused, abandoned space.
Text by Louisa Behr, gallerytalk (translated by machines and the artist)
The walk-in installation deals with the experience of remote work. Video conferencing systems have become the normality of the workplace. To blanket the private space the tools suggest virtual backgrounds to the user, so they can enter utopian office spaces or landscapes. The MDF architectures are materializations of these default office backdrops - mirrored from the virtual into „real life“, they become physical stages of different scale.
A landscape of potted plants, borrowed from university administration offices, form a back- (and fore-) ground. The relics of personal workplace design embody a longing, due to their mostly tropical origin, but also represent placelessness: the ficcus has its home on the window- sill of Mrs. Hagen and in Taiwan. The postcard pinned to the office wall shows a non-existing landscape generated by a machine learning model (see: remoteness, insularity, difficult topogra- phy). It promises a remote place of relaxation and regeneration.
Mediterranes Haus mit Meer im Hintergrund conveys a feeling of placelessness. It reflects on the relationship between virtuality and physicality in today‘s working world as well as its gaze regimes in the tension field between public and private.