Artist from Basel, Switzerland

We are all part of a whole

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As a media artist, Michel Winterberg has been devoting cultural and socio-political issues to inter-media interventions since the 1990s in participatory video and sound installations, mixed media works and works that are provided with animatronic elements.

The central element of the work is the interactive involvement of the viewer, which brings the questioning of our conventions of perception and our idea of ​​a specific view of the world to the fore and at the same time makes it available. This intermedia dialogue does not refer exclusively to the interplay of different forms of media, but is expanded to include the interplay of the fields of action between things, materiality, inter-mediality and people.

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The works of the artist Winterberg focus in terms of content and form on the recently globalized media and political mechanisms that continually constitute and irritate our identity, environment and our image of the world. These complex relationships are formulated in the artist‘s assemblages as a political, cultural-sociological statement, but also get a playful twist through their participatory, intermedia arrangement.

The intermedial work Political Jesus is based on an artistic form-finding from Winterberg‘s childhood, in which he used the omnipresent banners of the political campaign “Atomkraftwerk. No thanks! ”Visualized in connection with the figure of Jesus as an assemblage. Both questioning and political statements are shown on the display, such as “In between I need my steak, sorry!”, “Why do women still not have the same rights?” Or “Slavery still exists!”. In connection with the figure of Jesus, the significance of the environmental policy statement “Atomkraftwerk. No thanks! ”A completely new level of meaning. The figure of Jesus generally stands for charity, revelation, unremitting commitment - even against all odds - for a different, better world. On the other hand, the use of the figure of Jesus also refers to the ongoing shift of a belief tied to a religion towards communities that are based on mutual interests - be it art, be it questions about equality, questions of sexuality or environmental policy, to name but a few call - define.

Untitled Man and Vulnerability are based on a photograph taken in Dehli in 2014 and are supplemented by an algorithm programmed by the artist. The central aspect of the artistic expression is the question of the relationship between space, time and movement and the different, impossible to perceive uniformly conception of it. Each of us, no matter where in the world, always moves completely individually and with a perception through space and time that is different from all others. If we pause for a moment and call this into consciousness, we become aware of our tinyness in the universe, our nothingness for the meaning of the whole, and thus an infinite loneliness. Yet, as seemingly small and insignificant as we may be to the world as a whole, Each of us is unique and irreplaceable for the world, everyone has a responsibility to the world and his fellow human beings and thus makes an important contribution.

Insect Disguise and Stranded Topography show a weightless form that seems to float through space and time and is constantly changing into geometric and amorphous entities. As a further development of the animated still of the interactive, audiovisual installation Anima Perplexa, these works refer to the impossibility of capturing time. Moments can indeed be called up in our memory, but are always perceptible only shifted due to a fundamental difference. The difference is characterized by space, time, movement - in short, by the cultural setting and the always deceptive perception.

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