fiction Archive | malenki.net

Dear Clark,

Robert Schlotter — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 14:52:14 +0000

Christian Karl, a bit ordinary, hardly impressive. The names he designed for himself were more beautiful, more resonant: Christopher Crowe, Clark Rockefeller. He created his own reality, and everyone fell for it. With each new name he left his previous life behind. As though it had never existed. Almost without a trace.

Erasing the past, tailoring a new identity, becoming somebody else; not just anyone, but a Rockefeller. The old, long buried self used to be Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter from Bavaria. But he vanished a long time ago in a journey from Germany to the States. His initials were lost in a series of taken names; his skin appropriated a handful of aliases, all grandiose and luxurious in lifestyle. In 2008, after three decades of spurious identities, the lie collapsed and with it the man. Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, aka Christopher Crowe, Clark Rockefeller to name but a few; to many a swindler, a con man, a crook; to others, a gifted storyteller, a man with a polished accent who dared to be whatever he wished.

Sara-Lena Maierhofer discovered Clark in a newspaper article in 2008. She became fascinated by the man with multiple skins and decided to approach him. After Clark refused to meet her, she decided to study him from a distance; to conduct her own criminal investigation based on the existing pieces of forensic evidence- the bits of newspaper, pictures, even Clark’s early childhood drawings, and her letters to him. Still Maierhofer needed to go further. In an attempt to penetrate the multiple layers of his lie and reach the core of his personality, she chose to approach him through fiction, following Clark’s lead. She imagined him in a world of clones and doubles, one where the borders of truth and lie collapse against the rigid confinements of the image.

Der Beitrag Dear Clark, erschien zuerst auf malenki.net.

The Perfect Crime: Concerning The Murder Of Reality

Robert Schlotter — Sat, 03 Aug 2024 09:42:42 +0000

Germany is a crime fiction country. If wanted, fictional murder and manslaughter can be witnessed many times a day throughout the main television networks. There are more than 238 crime series available on Germany’s six largest broadcasting channels. Based on the overrepresentation of fictional murder on German television, The Perfect Crime investigates the effect of crime series on our perception and behaviour. The work examines the use of imaging techniques within police work and its epistemic implications, as well as the question of how fictional narratives change our perception of reality.

The work combines several photographic techniques and approaches: Staiger and Uchtmann have made photographs on the film sets of German crime series, overstageing scenes, leading to an abstraction of what is depicted contrasted with supposedly authentic imagery of corpses and crime scenes. In the portrait series various actors, who played victims and perpetrators in German crime series have been altered by artificial intelligence to create new possible versions of them, linked to the creation of phantom images in real police work. Furthermore, locations that has served as a movie set for a fictional crime scenes are documented as 3D reconstructions via photogrammetric methods.

In the book, the artistic examination is complemented with texts by Karen Fromm, Image Traces: Forensic Media and the Documentary Gaze, and sociologists Aldo Legnaro and Andrea Kretschmann, Crime narratives as narratives of order. (https://kultbooks.com/)

German Photobook Award Bronze Winner (Dummy) 2023

Der Beitrag The Perfect Crime: Concerning The Murder Of Reality erschien zuerst auf malenki.net.

Echos from the Dephts (A true fiction)

Robert Schlotter — Tue, 03 May 2022 12:28:28 +0000

None of it is true, he said. I fabricated every word of it!

On April 22, 1970, the centenary of Lenin’s birth, the foundation stone was laid in the Kola Peninsula, on the edges of the USSR, where the deepest hole in the world was going to be drilled. If the scientific discoveries are commensurate with the feat, the site of the Kola Superdeep Borehole will also give rise to an urban legend that will first spread in American evangelical circles in the early 90s, to today spread throughout the virtual world of conspirators. Documenting both the original scientific approach and the legend of Well to Hell, mixed in full page and thumbnail format, the images are all from the web. The poor quality of the compressed images translate the scrambling of the facts, the dilution of the truth in the fiction, just like the choir of texts stating so many snatches of alternative facts.

Der Beitrag Echos from the Dephts (A true fiction) erschien zuerst auf malenki.net.

Where Can I Find A Horse in Cambodia?

Robert Schlotter — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 20:55:28 +0000

The golden age of Cambodian cinema, a period that lasted from 1960 to 1975, survives mostly in memory as many of the films were destroyed, and actors and directors killed by the Khmer Rouge shortly afterwards. This work, compiled during trips to Phnom Penh between 2017 and 2019, reimagines elements from this missing archive through reenactments and interpretations of oral remnants. A fanfiction existing at the borderlands of myth, history, and collective memories.

“I’m surrounded by landscapes of memory. The stories are still alive in their minds, but the visual source is no longer there. Absorbed by nostalgic fantasies I’m creating my own fiction, a fanfiction. Somebody else’s idea of somebody else’s world.” — Viktor van Hoof, from Where Can I Find A Horse in Cambodia?

Fanfiction is a work of fiction based on characters or settings originating in another work, created by fans of the original work rather than by its creators.

Der Beitrag Where Can I Find A Horse in Cambodia? erschien zuerst auf malenki.net.

The forgotten mobilization

Robert Schlotter — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 13:20:08 +0000

The forgotten mobilization is dealing with the relationship between historiography, gender and urban space using the example of Lutherstadt Wittenberg using different media. The artist deals with alternative narratives within the existing historiography and the utopian potential which can be applied to them. On the basis of a fictitious historical scenario The general strike of women of Wittenberg on 4 May 1987 Luise Schröder asks “what could have happened”. On one hand, the memorial plaque designed for public space recalls this fictitious historical event, while simultaneously discussing the conditions of historiography and historical narratives. The typeface design Friedlaender especially designed for the plaque by Reymund Schröder, is a homage to the Jewish font designer Elisabeth Friedländer, who worked in Germany in the 1930s. The double-sided poster provides information on the reasons and the course of the strike. As installation The forgotten mobilization is supplemented by a video that presents suggestions by citizens of Wittenberg to the question which women of Wittenberg should be mentioned on possible memorial plaques in the city. This public survey was carried out by the artist in the run-up to this work.

Der Beitrag The forgotten mobilization erschien zuerst auf malenki.net.

Antrum

Robert Schlotter — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 08:42:19 +0000

In her book Antrum Rio Staelens showcases images of various „Lourdes grottos“ surrounded by their specific flora. As replicas of The Grotto of Massabielle, part of a Catholic sanctuary in the french city of Lourdes, the Lourdes grottos were re-built in the 19th and 20th centuries in various places, including Belgium. An artificial cave surrounded by a specific rock formation, accompanied by a niche for a statue of Saint Mary, sometimes provided with an altar, these caves represent an important place of local pilgrimage of Catholic believers. Rio Staelens: “Covered by mosses, ferns and rock plants, these sculptures have become one with nature. Often surrounded by exuberant exotic plants, a distant world that shows us the remains of a religious culture is evoked. Like the caves, which are reproductions and therefore a lie, the photographs project an image that is an illusion. A fantasy.“

Der Beitrag Antrum erschien zuerst auf malenki.net.

Dear Clark, – Edition

Robert Schlotter — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 15:44:57 +0000

The work of Sara-Lena Maierhofer evolves around the life of a stranger. In Dear Clark, the artist tries to approach Clark Rockefeller, a con man whose life consisted of adopting and abandoning different identities. When she fails to arrange a meeting with the person in question, she decides to study him from a distance. Step by step, the artist comes closer to getting to know her subject; his appearance, his peculiarities, his intentions. How can one construct a profile of someone who constantly readjusts himself? What characterizes a man who systematically defies character? How do you grab someone who constantly aims to breakaway? — Sara-Lena Maierhofer

Artist book in English language with three fold-out pages and eleven tip-ins. Hardcover with changeant cloth binding and silkscreen printing.

Der Beitrag Dear Clark, – Edition erschien zuerst auf malenki.net.