Graduating members of the Simon Denny class at HFBK are delighted to showcase their body of work during the Annual Graduation Exhibition in the year 2023.

Belia Brückner

@_beliazannageetha/

GUTEN APPETIT!

The work GUTEN APPEITIT! examines the social, cultural and political function of table communities. During the exhibition weekend the selected menus, taken from political day-to-day business, were cooked by Lukas Schrader and the team of @kreativmensa. Place cards, flower arrangements and individual napkins indicate the various gatherings to exhibition visitors.

2023, Selected menus of the Mensa during the exhibition, collaboration with Lukas Schrader and the staff of the HFBK mensa, mixed media.

Photo: Maximilian Glas

Merle Dammhayn

@lemerle_

ospite

with invitations by Nausicaa Sferlazzo, Giovanni Fragapane, Vito Gallo, Alessandra Balistreri, Giacomo Sferlazzo, and Fabrizio Fasulo

'ospite' takes up the Mauss'ian gesture of gift exchange, which underpins the artistic programme that the artist is currently developing for Lampedusa together with the local municipality. 'The Gift' provides for several months artist residencies during which artists collaborate with local actors – initiatives, organisations, collectives, individuals, ecc.

In 'ospite', six lampedusani invite us to engage with both the various geopolitical phenomena and local-specific structures that have become intricately interwoven on Lampedusa. They encourage us to think about economically driven politics of closure, militarisation, deficiencies of the nation-state, mass tourism, the Anthropocene, the geological morphology of the island, its meagre cultural offerings, its weak resources and precarious supply situation, such as a disastrous health infrastructure.

2023, 6 Wall Pieces, Digital Prints on Silk in Mahogany Frames and Box

Photo: Andreas Hopfgarten @andreashopfgarten

Ki Bui

@chopchoplemonpickle

A Decomposite Symphony

Communication is the transmission of information that occurs in a variety of different forms, differentiated from each other along a number of dimensions. As sound and its use in communication have significantly contributed to shaping the ecology, evolution and behavior, there are given many hypotheses whether plants could use sound as a type of communication. But unlike us and other animals, the mechanisms coordinating plant sensing, behavior and communication are quite different from the systems that accomplish similar tasks in animals.

The installation is the observation that uses sound as a stimulus to promote the growth of the avocado plant. Exposing the plant to a decomposed/composed sound piece based on the frequencies of sound waves emitted by the plant and the surrounding environment. The visualization of sound waves appears on the wall by a reflector filled with water, different sound frequencies when encountering water creates different geometric patterns on the surface.

Contradictory to the performance of natural phenomena, the videos display the brutality of avocado farming industry and compilation of avocado commercials. Its popularity among the millennials in the West turns into a burlesque and a disturbed emotion towards environmental-social problems.

Dongchan Kim

@__dchan

Aitar

Dongchan Kim has shown a great interest in digitalization and datafication through his work. Aims to d

emonstrate how AI collects data and engages in creative activities.

Over the past year, he has been using AI to generate images. During this process, he occasionally experienced producing copyrighted images, which led him to realize that AI is not merely reproducing existing content.

Similarly, his current artwork, 'AI generated nebula,' showcases the reproduction of erroneous data present in AI's big datasets and how it is distributed and referenced. Through the Nebula in the artwork, humans randomly colorize virtual images distributed by NASA, and AI reinterprets and visualizes them. Despite using various AI programs to create these images, there are instances of misinterpretation, and thereafter, the AI gets stuck in a loop of repetitive similar actions.

2023, 3m x 3m, Movingscreen, Digital signage / 4min

Photo: Dongchan Kim

Karla Zipfel

@karlazipfel

Häuser und Maximen

Since the post-war period in the German Federal Republic, the owner-occupied home has been strongly promoted politically and embodies the aspirations of a broad middle class. The model-like houses appear stacked, fusing the owner-occupied home with apartment blocks and promotional items from banks. As the viewers wander through, they are eyed by gingerbread foxes modeled after the mascot of Germany's largest building society, Schwäbisch Hall. The facades of the buildings and promotional objects, whose design was created under the promise of social advancement through intelligence and discipline, appear like ruins in the context of today's real estate market, whose exclusionary mechanisms reach far into the middle class.

2023, Installation, mixed media

Photo: Karla Zipfel

Sarah Savalanpour

@Sarah.savalanpour

Meeting Unknown People

Through the use of familial archives, this documentary delves into the relationship between the Artist's grandmother's recollections and her past experiences, examining the intersection of these memories with the Artist's own memories.

The secondary major theme of the film is a historical record of girls‘ schools in Rasht, Gilan province, where she grew up. The film follows the evolution of schools over a century, from before, during, and after the Islamic revolutions.

2023, Documentary Film/ 13.min/ Single-channel video

Photo: Tim Albrecht

Malin Dorn

@dropthedeadcat

Blended Territories

Based on thoughts about hybridity in human interaction with technology and medicine, the installation "Blended Territories" deals with the monstrous potential in the representation of hybrid beings. In their form, hybrid beings break existing systems of order and thus draw attention to boundaries and the transgression of them. They have an important function in thinking about social change. This potential is explored in an installation consisting of four UV prints on roll charts and four chart holders. Through the use of transparencies and gradients, digitally calculated images merge with the analogue material of the charts, creating a hybrid image in their physical presence, complementing different systems of order.

2023, 4 UV-prints on old roll charts

Photo: Andreas Hopfgarten @andreashopfgarten

Prateek VIjan

@prateek_vijan

They told me and I believed it

The installation, "They told me, and I believed it," is derived from my research about the infamous looting of the musical instrument known as “Tipu’s Tiger” during the Anglo-Mysore war, which was a part of the British colonial rule in India. The object is currently kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This looting is further legitimated by various anti-restitution laws such as the British Museum Act of 1963 and the National Heritage Act of 1983. My installation "They told me, and I believed it,” composes a theatrical scenario loosely based on a fictional heist plan I developed during my stay in London. Placed within a shipping container sits an empty transportation crate surrounded by cubes of shredded paper. The blue protection foam inside the wooden box reveals the negative space of the instrument's outline. However, the object itself is missing yet again.

2023, Material: Mixed media

Photo- Tim Albrecht

Julia Koch

@semi.nice

Looked at clouds from both sides now, and still

The work is an 8-channel sound installation that transcribes the "in-house" network traffic of the HFBK into sound sequences, coiling through the steel structure of a server cabinet. Julia's graduation piece is the fourth model in her research, focusing on the material status and effects that information technology infrastructures have. These systems are subjects that draw on limited resources, human labor, suffering, and time.

Music, as a cultural artifact, in particular, enjoys a nimbus that seems monolithic in production. The streaming of auditory moments has become increasingly popular through various on-demand platforms such as Spotify, not only as a dominant mode of energy-hungry consumption and supposedly progressive monetization of music but also creating a ghost ship of piracy that fuels those particular media platforms.

2023, Installation with a Server Rack and Sound, Duration: 12 min sound loop

Photo: Jaewon Kim

Andreas Hopfgarten

@andreashopfgarten

The story of German interrogator Hanns Scharff

Once upon a time there was a man named Hanns Scharff. He was an interrogator of the German Luftwaffe during WWII. In 1934 he joined the NSDAP. His task was to gather information to obtain military advantages for Nazi Germany. After the war Scharff worked as a mosaicist in the U.S. One of his mosaics can be seen in the Cinderella Castle at Disney World in Florida.

2023, Material: Mixed media

Photo: Andreas Hopfgarten