Alexandra Bircken runs a transverse cut through the body of a motorcycle, a Ducati, thereby not only exposing the machine’s surprisingly biomorphic interior, but also putting to work previously developed methods such as collage and the cuts of film editing. For film director Jean-Luc Godard, every cut is a lie, as much a caesura as a potential linkage. But beyond this, the cut surfaces in Bircken’s sculptures are points of intersection for media and systems that correlate industrial, artistic, and biological production with one another. The direct application of the cut to an object already cast in commodity form, the precise, brute intervention (through separation, as in typical collage) into the structure of the material creates a moment of estrangement and connection. It does this in relation not to other images, however, but to a highly functional object that embodies the immediate present.
In transferring the industrial product into a sculpture and finally into an image, Alexandra Bircken’s work experiences an aesthetic intensification. For this year’s annual edition, she translated the cut surface of the motorcycle into a digital image, reproduced at full scale as a handmade screen print. In keeping, the print is no frottage, no one-to-one transfer; nonetheless, it remains a delicate indexical trace rather than a representation of the actual surface of the machine, which was sectioned with considerable technical effort. By allowing various media representations of the purpose-built vehicle to circulate through a range of contexts, the artist places the ambivalence of the cut in juxtaposition with imposing production logics and the coupling of form and function in high-performance bikes.
– Anette Freudenberger (translated from German)
Photo: Mareike Tocha