Ralph Kistler
Works as freelance artist in Munich and temporary lecturer for Physical Computing at the University of La Laguna, Spain
ㅇ Stay in ㅣ 2015
ㅇ Email ㅣ check-in@subtours.com
ㅇ Hompage | www.subtours.com
Education
2013 PhD in Fine Arts, Universidad de La Laguna, Spain
2006 MFA Master of Public Art and New Artistic Strategies, Bauhaus Universitat Weimar, Germany
2003 LicenciadoenBellasArtes de la Universidad de La Laguna
2003 LicenciadoenBellasArtes de la Universidad de La Laguna
2015 Artist in Residence, Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon, Seoul, South Korea
2011 New Face Award, Japan Media Arts Festival, Japan (with Jan M. Sieber)
2006 Second Prize, Bienal regional de ArtesPlasticas, Tenerife
Scholarship of Investigation: Caja Canarias para Postgraduadosconvocatoria 2006
2006 Second Prize, Bienal regional de ArtesPlasticas, Tenerife
Scholarship of Investigation: Caja Canarias para Postgraduadosconvocatoria 2006
Group exhibitions (selection)
2015Share Prize 2014: “Autonomous”,Temporary Museum, Torino, Italy
2014 14th International Contemporary and Video Art Festival “Waterpieces”, Riga, Latvia
2014Open Systems, GPL contemporary, GaleriePeithner-Lichtenfels, Vienna
2013FILE Festival, Sao Paulo, Brazil
2013 video_dumbo 2013, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York, USA
2013 Region0, Festival de Video Arte Latino, Centro Rey Juan Carlos I de Espana, NYU, New York, USA
2013 video_dumbo 2013, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York, USA
2013 Region0, Festival de Video Arte Latino, Centro Rey Juan Carlos I de Espana, NYU, New York, USA
2013 PangaeaQuito, Arte Actual Flacso, Quito, Ecuador*
2013 Pangaea Cuenca, Galeria Proceso Arte Contemporaneo, Cuenca, Ecuador
2013 Transmediale, BWPWAP - Back When Pluto Was A Planet, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany
2012 Platine Cologne, ElektronischeKunstundalternativeSpielformen, Koln, Germany
2012 PangaeaMunchen, Galerie der Kunstler, MunchenGermany
2012 15th Japan Media Arts Festival, National Art Center Tokyo, Japan
2010 "Shadow Dance", KunsthalKAdE, Amersfoort, Netherlands
2010 “PikselSavers”, Meta.Morfbiennial, KIT Gallery, Trondheim, Norway
2013 Pangaea Cuenca, Galeria Proceso Arte Contemporaneo, Cuenca, Ecuador
2013 Transmediale, BWPWAP - Back When Pluto Was A Planet, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany
2012 Platine Cologne, ElektronischeKunstundalternativeSpielformen, Koln, Germany
2012 PangaeaMunchen, Galerie der Kunstler, MunchenGermany
2012 15th Japan Media Arts Festival, National Art Center Tokyo, Japan
2010 "Shadow Dance", KunsthalKAdE, Amersfoort, Netherlands
2010 “PikselSavers”, Meta.Morfbiennial, KIT Gallery, Trondheim, Norway
2009 Das Festival zurBauhausbuhne,"Figurenraume – Raumfiguren",Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, Germany
2009 whiteclub #4, "Discoveries and Inventions", ehemaligeMediathek, Salzburg, Austria
2009 "90 anni di Bauhaus", Goethe Institut Roma, Italy
2009 "Crash!Boom!Bau!", Festival furNeueSzenografie, Theaterhaus Jena, Germany
2008 paraflows08: UTOPIA, MAK Gegenwartskunstdepot, GefechtsturmAhrenbergpark, Viena, Austria
2008 "8.1", Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
2007 "HelloHackability", Piksel 07, Gallery 3.14, Bergen, Norway
2007 Arco 07, Madrid
2009 whiteclub #4, "Discoveries and Inventions", ehemaligeMediathek, Salzburg, Austria
2009 "90 anni di Bauhaus", Goethe Institut Roma, Italy
2009 "Crash!Boom!Bau!", Festival furNeueSzenografie, Theaterhaus Jena, Germany
2008 paraflows08: UTOPIA, MAK Gegenwartskunstdepot, GefechtsturmAhrenbergpark, Viena, Austria
2008 "8.1", Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
2007 "HelloHackability", Piksel 07, Gallery 3.14, Bergen, Norway
2007 Arco 07, Madrid
Individual exhibitions and Public Interventions (selection)
2010 "Progeso y Bienestar",Casa-Museo Gutierrez Albelo,Convento de San Francisco,Icod de los Vinos,Spain
2009 "Cuentos Chinos",Proyecto 60, TEA, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Spain
2006 “Das ewigeVerlangen der DeutschennachdemLebensgefuhl des Sudens”, Park an der Ilm, Weimar
2009 "Cuentos Chinos",Proyecto 60, TEA, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Spain
2006 “Das ewigeVerlangen der DeutschennachdemLebensgefuhl des Sudens”, Park an der Ilm, Weimar
Workshops
2014 Introduccion a Arduino, University of LaLaguna, Tenerife
2013 Introduccion a Arduino, Arte Actual Flacso, Quito, Ecuador
2011 Introduccion a Arduino y PureData (togetherwith Rafael Hidalgo),University of LaLaguna, Tenerife
2013 Introduccion a Arduino, Arte Actual Flacso, Quito, Ecuador
2011 Introduccion a Arduino y PureData (togetherwith Rafael Hidalgo),University of LaLaguna, Tenerife
2010 Einfuhrungskurs Arduino, Steuerungstechnik fur Kunst, Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste Dresden, Germany
2009 Introduction to Arduino, TEA, Tenerife Espacio de lasArtes
2006 Introduction to Physical Computing and Interactive Electronics,University of LaLaguna, Tenerife
2006 Introduction to Physical Computing and Interactive Electronics,University of LaLaguna, Tenerife
Publications and Catalogues
Highlike Book, SESI-SP editora, Sao Paulo (Brazil), 2014
Jan M. Sieber and Ralph Kistler. 2014. Monkey Business. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 335-336. ISBN: 978-1-4503-2635-3
Kistler, Ralph: “La modernidad y los territorios del ocio: el caso de El Cabrito en La Gomera”, La Laguna: Servicio de Publicaciones ULL, 2013
Kistler, Ralph: “Utopia, arte y turismo”, La Provincia, 7.06.2013, p.37
Pangaea Quito 2013 – Arte Actual Flacso, Quito (Ecuador), 2013
PangaeaMunchen 2012 – Galerie der Kunstler, Munchen, 2012
15th Japan Media Arts Festival Award-Winning Works, Japan Media Arts Festival Secretariats Office, Tokyo: 2012, p.36
15th Japan Media Arts Festival Award-Winning Works, Japan Media Arts Festival Secretariats Office, Tokyo: 2012, p.36
Meeuwen, Judith van (ed.): “Shadow Dance”, Ammersfoort: KunsthalKAdE, 2010,
VV.AA: “Distorsiones, documentos, naderias y relatos. 7.1 y 8.1”, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, 2009
ㅇ Works
Paradiseator, Interactive Installation, mixedmedia, variable dimensions, 2014
Video: http://vimeo.com/102172866
Los Moribundos, variable dimensions, mixed media, 2013
Video: http://vimeo.com/56374269
SocialNetwalks, Video, 7:39 min, 2012
Video: http://vimeo.com/39977472
Monkey Business, Interactive Installation, Kinect Sensor, Computer, Microcontroller, electronic components, Servo motors, steel. Casing: synthetic fabrics, cord, steel, 2011 (with Jan M. Sieber)
Cuentos Chinos (Chinese Stories), 18 Overhead Projectors, microcontrollers, motors, mixed media, variable dimensions, 2009
Schaukelapparat (Swing Apparatus), video, mixed media, variable dimensions, 2009
Video: http://vimeo.com/67427541
Progressor, kinetic sculpture, 2008
The Paradiseator and the tinker
JOSE DIAZ CUYAS
The word we use to name the paradise comes from pairidaeza, a word of Iranian origin to designate enclosed artificial gardens. From the symbolism of the garden the term has evolved to acquire the religious meaning that we concede even nowadays. And astonishingly enough it is diverged in the latin paradisus and in the persian pardis, keeping independently the same meaning in both cultural traditions. Paradise is a place where no mortal may have had access, but it is apparent that whatever is the secret of its power, it must be inherent in the garden.
With his Paradiseator Ralph Kistler proposes us a machine to have custom built paradises, but following our etymological track, whatever this appliance produces, it must be something very similar to generate gardens à la carte. The topic of private gardens is not merely a speculative question, on the contrary the individual paradises can be located in an actual place in our cities. Indeed in our homes, garden utensils for the exterior of the domestic space are usually stored together with the DIY tools for maintenance tasks in the interior. With the modern motto Do-It-Yourself the promise of an intimate and definitive appropriation of our habitat is hidden; as owners we hold our rights over an abstract extension but we perceive the place like a networks of functions: to feel at home we have to put on an overall of a mechanic and dream with the last control that gives us this manual obligation over our habitat machine.
Nevertheless, there is always a difference between the tinkerer wants to do and what he in fact does: these interconnections of functions that determine the spaces nowadays are presupposing a high level of technical expertise, and the separation between the professional and the amateur leads to the main stylistic peculiarity of tinkering: the botch. To do a shoddy job is the result of our private attempts to repair or compose what is broken in places dominated by mechanisms and functions, and that is possibly the reason behind the most defining characteristic of our experience of the place.
Because of that it is not surprising that some of the most representative works of art of the 20th century are linked, since Dada and Fluxus, to the practice of DIY and the aesthetics of the botch. Tinkering is not only an unqualified way of the functional, it is also an individual practice to unite or to connect with our own hand all this that in the public sphere functions separately and is delegated by specialists.
The home garden is probably the most representative place for this manual tactic of resistance: opposite to the strict normalization of the interior of the house, the enclosed and exterior cultivation appeals to the ornamental and unregulated whims of the organic life. It is like the counterpart of these places of correct and legal functionality which are constituting the house or the city. Therefore “since the beginnings of antiquity”, like affirms Michel Foucault, the garden is “a sort of happy, universalizing heterotopia”. The French philosopher takes it like a model of the heterotopias’ capability of “juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible”
Being a physical place as well as a stage of representation, the garden articulates spaces that are in themselves uncompromising: artificial-natural, interior-exterior, image-atmosphere, functional-ornamental, public and private, working day-holiday… all of them interrelated with the ancestral symbolism of paradise. That is why the garden, as a staged real space, can be considered as archetype of these fabulous Heterotopias that actually constitute the touristic spaces. The Paradiseator could be, according to its name, a kind of space sampling machine, a gaming machine that invites us to play making places by a network of functions over the screen and whose maximum prize is no other than to become tinker gardeners of our own paradise.
