manipulated photography, Leipzig Museum of Natural History

During the time of the collaborative exhibition project „naturalmente“ – this artwork was replacing the original item in the permanent exhibition of the Leipzig Museum of Natural History.

_{I am the doorway – porta sum}

performance, art-gallery INTERDRUCK Schipper~Patitz, Leipzig

_{part III, 2000 July 12th, photography: André Köhler}

Dear Sir or Madam,
The work with the title „I am the doorway – Abendmahl“ which you can see today describes the development of an artistic work into a product.
As a result of this development, the work manifests itself today by means of an artificial product presentation.
Every time has its own text.
The TOR software i developed articulates a text which can be exclusively read by machines. The assimilation of the text by eating symbolises, as a philosophical metaphor, belief in the truthfulness of words.
The eater acts – similarly to a scanner – as hardware, he does not understand the text.
Through the assimilation the spirit of each, equal to the software, is loaded with codified data.
We have to trust in our software.
This food is thus the only human spirit in this context – the revelation of the word during supper.
As: “He who does not believe sees nothing, and he who does not see believes not.“ The codified text available in the food contains one of the quotes divided in four panel paintings from the book John/ Chapter 4/ Verse 34:
My food is (panel 1)
to do the pleasure of  (panel 2)
him who sent me (panel 3)
and to make his work complete (panel 4)
He references in this case the Christian-Western background of these images in our culture, despite all future visions.

installation/software TOR 1.1

In 1999 the „I am the doorway“ series of works had it first appearance at „Translation“ Kunstförderpreis der Stadtwerke Halle. This particular work is based on the idea to find an expression for a contemporary tattoo. Artist Bernhard Schipper developed a software (TOR) what is able to encode any sentence into a threedimensional bitmap. Later on Berlin based tattoo artist Tobias Werner from Pain & Ink Dept. did the real job by getting the encoded sentence „I am the doorway“ into Bernhard Schippers skin. Since the artist isn’t able to stay 24/7 in an exhibition over weeks – the artwork itself has disappeared by intention. The only proof that the artworks exists: a bloody and stained shirt what the artist was wearing after the tattoo session and a cheap framed photography of the fresh tattoo.

*1970 in Bautzen

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