am: On the lecture at RAM, your introduction of this project began directly from describing the contents of your work. On what ground did you decide to present it that way? Could you generally explain the reason that you initiated this project and when did it start?
Sibylle: I'm involved in this project on 2 major levels: My own photography, which leads me to the subjects that are relevant for the project. And on a certain moment, I guess in 2009, I didn't just want to stay in art contexts and show the photography as a comment on societal and political processes but to impose the “closer view” to the reality of press photography. In art, artists and curators/ museums/ galleries (Betriebssystem Kunst) form what is understood as contemporary art. The same happens in news. The interdependence of producers and the “operating system” develops a specific character as well.
If I remember correctly, I started the RAM talk with works from 25 years ago to sketch the background. Concerning your question, “Agentur Schwimmer” applies a similar practice. In that time, in the eighties, I was already addicted to an art practice which undertakes a transformation process to real spaces, e.g. the classical dream of aristocratic wealth with candelabras, parquet floors and opulent dinner tables; implemented by parquet made of fruit-boxes or concrete, candelabras cut from tin-cans instead of silver and crystal, the opulent dinners where mountains of potatoes, onions and dried fish (which by the way, came from China). Someone in that time coined the term “Impoverished Baroque”. The process with the press agency has similarities. If Getty Images creates what we understand as news, we can set up a project that claims to create what may be understood as news. A model, a transformation of reality. According to Ernst Bloch’s “Ästhetik des Vor-Scheins” (aesthetics of pre-sumption) the agency might be utopian.am: In your Agentur Schwimmer project, many social topics have been involved, such as education, health care, politics, exhibitions (conferences) etc. Do you value all subjects equally or there are some subjects that you would like to spend more time on?
S: As we are a Press Photography agency, we are urged to emphasise politics and economy, followed by social topics and later on, culture and sports.
If one looks at the character of these topics more closely, the first primarily deals with the players in society. Who has the power? How do they look like? What can we tell about the difference of appearance and being? Etc.am: You have worked on installations before, though it seems that they are not part of this Schwimmer project. Do these two media act as two clues for your work? Is there any hint that you could let us know?
S: As stated before, the agency project is a working model. It doesn't need realisation in physical space. What we gradually realised here in Shanghai will be a major focus of the next City Desk. Here we integrated Roll-Ups to the exhibition space. They come from everyday presentations and their ambiguity interests me. When I'm taking pictures in any official space I usually can't avoid the roll-ups. They usually have an obtrusive design (called “information”). But spatially they are interesting. When transported they have one dimension, (the x-axis), but if you open them they are 2-dimensional. If you place them in space they are 3-dimensional. Therefore they are perfect to connect the analytical and the aesthetical approach. As you may have recognised watching my personal website, spatial experience plays a major role in almost all my arts practice.
The next city desk in the small town of Heilbronn in Germany will transform the space with a storefront into the office of a city desk.am: Could you carefully introduce how the concept of what I may call ‘News Agency’ operate? For example, will people who contribute to the project receive a fee? Will you sell your photos? Do you select all the uploaded photos by yourself or is there a group of people discussing and selecting the photos together? What is the basic standard for selection? Do you think that your personal interests have a strong influence on the visual presentation of the whole website’s image database?
S:We started the project with three people, initially with my long-term working partner Sven Eggers, an architect, who joined-in at the beginning. We developed the concept together and web designer Turtleontour developed the technical base. In August 2013, the beta version went online. Currently, Sven Eggers is on a break from the agency. After myself, as local correspondent in Cairo, Sydney, and Haifa, Sofia in Bulgaria became the first Regional Desk. Since than Daniel Sellek became involved and now runs The Balkans Desk, as editor-in-charge. The idea is to start the project in a hierarchical way to give a clear idea where it goes and later to open-it-up to a cooperative structure. Two weeks ago, Daniel managed the participation of the agency in the Water Tower Art Fest in Sofia, while I was here in Shanghai. The Shanghai City Desk will find its own way of continuation. As mentioned earlier, the next city desk in Heilbronn, a small industrial city in Germany, will work as a corporate design office space and we are negotiating with the local newspaper Heilbronner Stimme to cooperate (these days small independent newspapers like the Voice of Heilbronn became rare although they were usual in the 1950s and throughout the 1980s).
After the development of the page, diversification and strengthening of the content are in focus and in Autumn, the effort will be directed towards distribution. Daniel Sellek has started the Agency’s implementation on social media.am: You have mentioned that your perspective and that of other photographers are different from those of mainstream medias. In fact there are many we-medias, including photo and video-sharing apps such as Instagram. Have you considered the differences? What is your original intention of setting up this platform, what is special about that?
S: Many people asked why your own platform? Compared to the social media, a website looks like a book. Something to hold in hand! You are right in that we are working in the triangle of art-world/ photo sharing/ press agency. Social media works on a prefabricated platform. Users are users. If Facebook changes design or features, I also have to change. Mark Zuckerberg governs the way of communication. None of the popular platforms are open source. I don't just look for a platform to show images. Context is meaningful. To gain sovereignty on the context, we need to create the context. Although our technical possibilities are limited compared to other platforms like Getty Image, which is linked to Flickr and uses it for its target audience, our design is relatively basic and almost neglected. It simply reflects our possibilities with the open source tool typo3, but we are not degraded to live just as consumers or users.
Just now after loads of recent upload of new images, it is time to restructure the page.am: I suppose this is your first time working with local participants in the form as ‘workshop’ in China. How do you feel during this process?
S: There were a few workshops before, although not to the extent of the China one. But let’s stay on the image of City Desks. I'm not blind to the gap between my intentions and the participants’ intentions. I assume all of us recognised it. I myself understand it as a dialectic process. We have just sent questions to the participants, let's see what they will say about it.
I have 24 hours a day to work on the project, but the participants have their occupations. Some of them take photos to follow their questions and have no time during the working week. Some of them try to get a hold of those questions via photography. When they decided to stay with the project, I think they found a common point and new aspects in the dialogue about their photos. I assume the meaning of the contextualisation that happens to their photography in our project was interesting, but not for all of the participants to the same extend. Slower or faster private ties developed.
am: During the third meeting, a participant raised a question that it is hard to have a deep and clear understanding of the operation of an incident or a system through photos, Do you agree with this or not? Have you ever experiment in another way?
S:I'm still not sure if understand the question. In fact some people seem to have problems understanding. I don't know why. Usually, they understand far more complex issues. I guess there are two major reasons. Generally “agency” is linked to making money. We have much more problems with this “cheap” image of the agency in Germany than here! People in Germany tell about people in Shanghai that they are just looking for money but I was delighted to throw away this presumption quite soon. Years ago I developed a project on the base of the internet auction platform ebay. I think it failed because people from the art world didn't even look at it, while I didn't have the personal persuasiveness to break through their general reserve. Now it’s the same but in a different way. An additional problem of “understanding” is caused by the fact that the Agency refers to the press reality in countries with a representative democratic system, where the content of media is an issue of economic survival. The defacto situation differs from the cultural goal and topic of “independent press” developed by bourgeois and former working class culture.
Therefore the role of the Schwimmer Agency project in China had to be redefined. In some countries press agencies and governmental press release bodies are the same thing. I'm not sure about the role of the XinHua press agency. I modified the city desk concept by widening the context: The Supply Chains of Society. Due to the special situation we are just looking for backgrounds.am: Though every country is facing different problems of reality, a foreigner could have a whole different point of view against a native towards a same event in a country, based on sensitivity of the event. How do you adapt to the transition in between?
S: Questioning perspectives and the interaction of perspectives is a meta subject of the project. The more similar the approaches the more boring the City Desk meetings.
am: In mainland China, conflicts mainly exist between government and citizens, unspeakable of course, as well as cooperatives and employees. New problems have emerged in a consumer society. In Shanghai, the required standard for a decent wedding is quite high. This not only comes from bride and groom, but also from both families. Some conflicts between parents and children can sometimes be irreconcilable. It is hard for westerners to enter and understand some minor problems.
S:Apart from the sheer dialogue about photography, this is what is interesting for both sides in the City Desk meetings, between the local and the foreigner. We are all conscious that At the End of the Day, globally we face the same problems (nutrition, environment, power). It's good that you name the complex issue marriage in Chinese society. Although in Germany we place the same images in our living rooms, weddings have a far different meaning (we will have four different Chinese weddings in our project's stock). I had the feeling the conflict line between government and people was partly a construction of the western press (instrumentalising the Chinese situation for our home issues). I got some slight ideas about the role the government plays in the conflict line tradition – (post) industrial development. A small idea about the ambiguity of education in actual form, about how narrow the time slices for individual development may be, etc.
am: In mainland China, many foreign media have been endowed with an independent status, thus, your viewing angle might be hard to distinguish from other foreign media? Could that raise some confusion?
S: Confusion? Plenty. Why not? I don't write a discourse. We publish images in a certain context. In case my knowledge is too limited to find an adequate neighbourhood for them, I rely on the participants to clarify. The final consistency has to be created through artistic practice and processes. That's the privilege, and here, final is never final.
Therefore I don't see any similarity to the views of the western press corps. In Germany I practically take the role of a hybrid – or a bastard: Press and art. Here I'm excluded from the press network.
am: Will the people you take photos for consider your request？So that it will present a huge difference from the photos they are usually taken?
S: We take photos for the online audience and as “semi-manufactured products” for exhibitions. One of the core ideas is to enhance the power of an image by context. This idea is not new but still interesting - especially in this context. This is an experimental part of the project: Where is the border? Many kinds of images may even undertake a change of paradigm, but suddenly it may be impossible. Too boring, too bad, to unfocused, too provincial; no feeling. Context might be a magician but not a god. This is the time to ask the question about manipulation.
We have explored different ways of integrating the images of the participants. Sometimes they suggested images they had taken before and we selected them. Sometimes they get inspired and take pictures for the project. A few series exist because I warmly recommended they do them. If I compare what we publish and what the participants had online or in their portfolios, I think they get to know other possibilities to select images. Some may widened their horizons of what may be a subject of photography; how to get closer to the subject without hurting it. It’s hard to tell. Generally, with professionals and amateurs, each person has their own background. That's why I ask questions of them, and now I’m waiting for the results. The most interesting with regards to process were two series that were derived from a separate professional context. We reselected a stock of 3500 contracted wedding photos (from one marriage by Marker Branco Vage) and explored the possibilities to re-view it. He was interested to know more about other possibilities. Besides his chemistry studies, he has a part time job in wedding photography. He has professional equipment, and although he is very young, he knows how to meet the clients needs. I had the feeling he is working on stepping out of the ghetto. Later he looked after his grandfather in a Shanxi hospital where he made a sensitive strong series. With no patients and with his mobile phone. Good to have the freedom to use bad equipment as well. The other stock was by Xiaoye Shao. For her job she documented the construction of a pedestrian deck in Pudong Lujiazan, from the first day to the opening. We had no time to select together, but from the material I could see Shao knew and developed the side qualities of her documentation job. Therefore, transformation for us is not so astonishing and I think it doesn't matter too much who is doing the selection. And the audience will see the well-known Pudong set-up from an almost unknown perspective. Two professional participants’ works meet the project's concept. I'd love to talk about each one - and they might have fun to read what I think they think, but I suggest waiting for their own statements and texts.am: In the first lecture a spectator asked if you understand yourself “left wing” or “right wing” You returned the question what he would guess. Will Western artists identify and distinguish themselves through that (political camp)?
S: Admittedly, I wasn't instantly amused by this question but it served the idea of compassion-fueled neutralism on a plate. Schwimmer is not a tool for appropriate political credo and doesn't go where the sympathy might be. It goes to where the questions are.