Independent AIR, Silkeborg

Leon Kirchlechner and Simon Karlstetter were invited by the Independent AIR to doing portfolio reviews and a workshop for the participants of the residency in Silkeborg, Denmark. The Independent AIR aims to create and promote meaningful relationships between young international artists. Through our activities the aim is to give visibility to both Danish and international photography and lens based art. The Independent AIR aspires to challenge, rethink and develop the roles of photography and lens based art as well as conceptualises the permanent exchange between the image and the viewer.

The artistic directors of DER GREIF, Leon Kirchlechner and Simon Karlstetter, offer a workshop for photography students and professionals. The workshop transfers aspects of DER GREIF’s artistic photographic practice and experiments with diverse possibilities of how to work with photography in the digital era. The team of DER GREIF is looking for a dialogue in which both parties – participants and directors – receive new impulses. This process is supported by the fact that the workshop is held by two directors with different approaches and artistic practices.

At the beginning of each workshop, DER GREIF shares insights into the project and its history, development and concept. As starting point the workshop-participants bring around 50 photographs as digital files; either complete series/works or single images. After building small groups, the participants select single images that they want to work with from this archive. These single images are then edited and placed in newly created contexts. Coherent, new combinations from various different origin-contexts evolve from this process.

These combinations build the basis for new works that don’t necessarily show a classical narrative structure.