Confession Station

Das Wort Geständnis hat viele Bedeutungen: Oftmals verbinden wir es mit Schuld. Oder mit Fehlbarkeit. Aber wir verwenden es auch in positiven Zusammenhängen. Zum Beispiel, wenn wir jemanden unsere Liebe eingestehen, oder wenn wir zugeben, dass uns eine Person sehr wichtig ist. Lässt man die moralische Bewertung des Wortes Geständnis beiseite, so eröffnet sich noch ein anderer Aspekt, nämlich dass ein Geständnis auch etwas ganz einfaches sein kann: das Offenlegen unserer ganz persönlichen Geschichte.

Confessionstation ist ein Ort, an dem Ihre persönliche Geschichte/Ihr Geständnis aufbewahren lassen können. Zum Beispiel in Form eines Briefes, eines Gegenstandes, aber auch in Form von Bild-und Tondokumenten. Der Gegenstand selbst wird vertraulich behandelt und in einer sogenannten „Confessionbag“ versiegelt.

Doch Confessionstation ist mehr als ein virtueller Tresor für persönliche Angelegenheiten. Confessionstation ist auch eine Galerie. Das heißt: Wir werden ihre Confessionbag fotografieren und auf unserer ( zunächst virtuellen) Galerie veröffentlichen.

Confessionstation versteht sich ebenfalls als ein Ort der Reflexion. Es geht also nicht nur darum, Aufbewahrung und Präsentation, sondern auch um die Auseinandersetzung mit der eigenen Geschichte. Der Inhalt ihrer Confessionbag gehört Ihnen und ist wie gesagt vertraulich. Natürlich steht es ihnen frei, etwas über den inhalt ihrer Bag zu erzählen. In jedem Fall möchten wir sie aber darum bitten, etwas über sich, bzw. über ihre Motivation zu erzählen.
Inwiefern Sie dabei ins Detail gehen möchten, bleibt ihnen überlassen. Wichtig ist nur, dass sie etwas schreiben.

Sui Sabine Wiley (Berlin) and Caroline Anderson (Chicago) first met in winter of 2007 when Caroline was in Berlin teaching for a study abroad program. This is their first project together.

About Sui Sabine Wiley:

 

About Caroline Anderson:

Ms. Anderson has an extensive national and international exhibition record and is represented in private and public collections worldwide. She is a Professor in the Interactive Media Design program at the Illinois Institute of Art Chicago.

carolineanderson.net

The word „Confession“ has many meanings:  it often implies guilt. Or even fallibility. But sometimes it brings with it positive connotations. For example, when we profess our love for someone, or when we acknowledge that someone is important to us. Leaving aside any moral evaluation of the word, we are still confronted with another aspect, namely that a confession can be something very simple:  the revealing of our own very personal history.

Confession Station is a place where you can preserve your own personal confession or acknowledgement. For example, in the form of a letter, an object, but also with a picture or sound-document. The object itself is handled confidentially, and sealed in a so-called “Confession Bag”.

That said, Confession Station is much more than a virtual vault for personal matters. Confession Station is also a gallery. That is to say, we will photograph your Confession Bag and publish it on our (initially virtual) gallery.

Confession Station is also meant to be a place of reflection.  It is not only about preservation and presentation, but also about controversy regarding your own history. The contents of your Confession Bag belong to you, and as such are held in confidence. Naturally, you are free to talk about the contents of your Bag. In any case, we encourage you to say something about yourself, or about your motivations. In what detail you choose to go is something left to you. What counts is that you write something.

This Project was originally proposed and accepted into TransCultural Exchange's "Here There and Everywhere: Anticipating the Art of the Future." What follows is excerpted from the proposal:

"International e-commerce has made commonplace the seamless, impersonal transaction of goods and money between individuals from different countries and cultures. Purchasing something via a keyboard attached to a light box involves a sort of sanitary distancing from the potential emotional content of the object being purchased. The psychological distance involved in the transaction can infer a confidence in the product’s clean and safe nature.

The purchaser’s confidence in a product’s sanitary condition can be further assured if the item is encased in plastic packaging. Plastic wrapping forms a cleanliness barrier, making it more possible to exchange items of uncertain provenance.

The objects produced in this Berlin - Chicago collaboration will be vacuum sealed by machine and will feature a grommet in one corner for ease in display, storage or carriage. The objects will be accompanied by true stories of Confession from their owners/originators. The strong emotional connotations of that each object carries will thus be both preserved and sanitized so that  the purchaser’s experience of them as aura objects will be mediated by a sanitary barrier of plastic.

The Project plays off of our longings to experience something authentic - either as a participant, collector or voyeur -  and our simultaneous desire to be safe and clean. The consumerist desires explored by this project will be fulfilled in the ultimate international consumerist marketplace of today – an eBay store. In addition, selected objects from Berlin and Chicago will swap cities for display in gallery settings (TBD), which ironically may seem to add an additional kind of sanitization.

Below is a detail of the types of objects, and their proposed distribution and display.

The Objects

• Vacuum sealed objects with a grommet at the top for carrying/hanging/storage
• As consumers (especially American consumers) we like plastic bags/wrapping, because it implies that the objects inside are safe from contamination OR that we are safe from the contamination in the objects themselves.
• Items will be sealed with their description included outside the package – aura objects and original stories
• all objects are “confessional” in some way (actual, metaphoric or anecdotal, political etc), the confession identified/ described by the originator.
• The items and stories will be branded with the collaboration’s seal of authenticity.

Display and Distribution
possible installation view

• Distributed on eBay in a US/German eBay store – auctioned off to the highest bidder. This concept uses eBay’s model of marketing reusable/ repurposed objects, described by the owner/originators. The eBay store will be branded as a US/German collaboration, and of course all items will be listed in both languages. Any proceeds will be donated to TransCultural Exchange.
  
• Distributed/displayed in a gallery in Berlin and one in Chicago (TBD)
• Gallery shows will feature vacuum sealed “dirty” objects from the other country. Americans and Germans are intrigued about each other, not least because of the intense political relationship we’ve shared over the past hundred years. Also many Chicagoans are of German ancestry, as are many Berliners associated in some way with Americans.