Kathrin Niedermeier’s new video is a revision of her animation video „reality island is elsewhere“ (2019) that reflects the entanglement of real life and the virtual space, as well as the influence of digital technologies on the human condition.
The animation video is about the humanoid protagonist named Rose, in search of her personal reality. With the help of the avatar Tessa, Rose attempts to experience her own body throughout various spaces in a performative way to reflect her subjective reality. Personal thoughts and memories of the character Rose flow, overlapping each other, into the storyline and determine the rhythm of the animation.
The new video serves a meta-film of its original version, as the protagonist appears in a cinema-esque space, watching scenes from the original video as a three-channel installation. The gaze observes the characters in various spacial settings which are forming the narrative framework of the video. The individual scenarios are supported by a monologue in which absurd to existential questions are raised, which are intended to encourage the viewer to engage in an inner conversation. At last, the perspective switches, transforming the viewer from observer into protagonist, as the s*he gets to shortly experience the avatar’s view in a quirky dance.

As a participative extension of the project, Katrin Niedermeier has created an instagram filter to immerse into the character Tessa and explore the Arcadia from „reality island is elsewhere“. The face filter aims to evoke questions of our digital embodiment via new and emerging technologies and media.

Katrin Niedermeier (DE, lives in Weil am Rhein and works in Basel)
*1978, Munich, Germany

In her artistic practice, Katrin Niedermeier investigates the area of humanly constructed spaces of longing, fictitious or of real nature and explores how these ideas manifest themselves in the form of „Arcadian“ gardens, virtual landscapes, avatars or personal fantasies.

Her work shows the ever-changing relations between virtual and physical spaces while its implementation and development is at the intersection of these two areas. Often, digital formats, mostly animations, are the starting points of her works, which she translates into installations, physical objects and paintings allowing a dialogue amongst each other.
The virtual world, as an entity with its own authorship, is constantly questioned in Niedermeier’s work and its potential and impact in the analogue and digital realms is explored through it.

Before her studies at the Art Institute at the University of Applied Science in Basel (CH), Katrin Niedermeier studied fashion design at ESMOD in Munich and Oslo and worked as a designer for Christian Dior and Jeanne Lanvin in Paris and Nicky Hilton in Los Angeles.

Recent exhibitions and video screenings include „idle idol monika” Palazzina, Basel (2020), „I and the Machine“ Galerie für Gegenwartskunst, Freiburg, „Avatare, Doppelgänger und allegorische Landschaften“ HEK, Basel (2019) HEK, “Kaliningrad Museum of Fine Arts “, Kaliningrad: “videocity Basel – Kaliningrad”, TBA21-Academy, The Current ll, Chus Martinez, Convening #2: Phenomen- al Ocean Space, Venice, 2019, „ihood“ at Kunsthaus Baselland (2019), „color your color“ Ewha Media Art Presentation, (EMAP), in Seol (2019), at the Hidden Bar during Art Basel in Basel (2019) and the group exhibitions „Hyperconscience“ at Shadok, Strasbourg (2018), „trans environmental exercises“ at Atelier Mondial in Basel (2018) and „Kurs“ in Raum 103 in Basel (2018).

HYPERTENSION presents two projects by artists Katrin Niedermeier and Johanna Bruckner as an exhibition extension, connected to the upcoming exhibition at PYLON-Lab.

What are significant properties that constitute the human body and how will these properties change over time?
If the human 1.0 experienced the technological revolution in the 20th century and the human 2.0 the digitalisation of itself and its surrounding environment, what will it look and feel like to become and be a human 3.0 in the 21st century and a more distant future?
How will human interactions be structured in the future and will they still be experienced viscerally and virtually? What will human communication sound like and what thoughts will be shared?
The artworks newly created for AOS present concepts of the human body in its alignment with its environment, including the virtual space and of its possible future manifestation. The artists’ works visualize and reflect possible current and future scenarios of human expression, intimacy and body related issues in the virtual and the analogue space. PYLON will present video- and text-based works along with graphic content on AOS that are not only the framework, but an integral part of the individual artworks. HYPERTENSION on AOS therefore serves not only as a prologue to the upcoming exhibition at PYLON-Lab IRL but will be an extension and reader, complementing the encounter with the works and helping to immerse in the content on both a notional and reciprocal level.