Artist Talk
Art und Weise: Tobias Zielony with Katherine Rochester

Artists in Conversation: On Youth Culture and Image Wars

Fri, 11/10/2023
18:30 - 20:30 Goethe-Institut New York

On the occasion of a research trip for his latest project on the legacy of the Kodak film plant in Rochester, NY, photographer Tobias Zielony will visit Goethe-Institut New York to talk about his recent work with art historian Katherine Rochester. This conversation will focus primarily on the artist's recent series Electricity / Afterimages (2023) and Watching TV in Narva (2023). Zielony will also speak about his previous series entitled Maskirovka, a project from 2016 and 2017 for which he spent two months in Ukraine documenting Kiev's lively queer and techno subcultures. In the context of Russia's attack on Ukraine last year and the ongoing war, these series have become even more relevant to our understanding of the power media plays in the region. In these works Zielony examines Russia's image politics – integral to its subversive warfare tactics – including the dissemination of manipulated and false information via social media, colloquially known as "maskirovka," or masking. 

Tobias Zielony's research project in Rochester takes place in preparation for his contribution to the OSTEN 2024 performance festival in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Germany. The project traces the connection between Wolfen, Germany; Rochester, New York USA; and Shostka, Ukraine. Once important sites of photographic filmstock production – Wolfen with the ORWO works, Rochester with the Kodak factory, and Shostka with the Svema factory – these cities still hold lingering effects of this legacy today. Zielony's contributions draw out a connection between photography as an image carrier and its impact on technology, geopolitics, culture, and the environment.

Tobias Zielony is a professor of Photography at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg. Until 2005, he studied at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. Most recently, the Folkwang Museum in Essen and the Museum Marta Herford held retrospectives of his work in 2021 and 2022/23, respectively. Prior to this, his works have regularly been exhibited in group shows in Germany and internationally, as well as the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2015. Zielony's artistic work mainly revolves around youth subcultures, with the role of images as a means of communication and the construction of a visual identity, with which those portrayed present themselves to the world, standing in the center of his interest. Reflecting on the interconnection of image circulation, developments in photographic technology, media literacy and the impact of political decision-making on every-day life forms the framework of Zielony's current photographic research.

Katherine Rochester is an art historian and curator who has worked widely in the United States and Europe. A specialist in contemporary art, German modernism, and film, she has published numerous essays on experimental animation in interwar Europe and co-edited the book Intersubjectivity Vol. 2: Scripting the Human (Sternberg Press). She was previously Curatorial Director at Lehmann Maupin (New York | London | Hong Kong | Seoul) and Director of Curatorial Research at VIA Art Fund, where she commissioned major new works of contemporary art from the world’s leading artists. She has held fellowships at the Center for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Getty Research Institute, and her scholarship has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She has received numerous awards, including the American Association of Museums MUSE Award: Gold Medal. She holds a B.A. from Grinnell College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College.