Self-Timer Stories

The exhibition Self-Timer Stories at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York presents works from the Federal Austrian Photography Collection in interplay with international positions from the field of extended photography. The leitmotif of this exhibition is the creation of a photograph via self-timer. This practice, popular both in everyday life and in art, reciprocates with technical developments and shows itself in the shutter release cables appearing in the compositions, the digital remote-control release, or the extended hand. In the moment of the camera's clicking (which is even artificially reproduced in digital photography) the "I as self-timer" becomes prevalent and thus marks the relationship of subject and world, while the result, the "I as image", oscillates between self-questioning, self-empowerment, and self-stylization. The exhibition and this catalogue map how identity discourses and photographic methods can be used in performance to foster an emancipatory visual politics that not only applies to the subjects, but also in the tensions between artist, camera and gaze. Artists: AA Bronson, Renate Bertlmann, Katrina Daschner, Carola Dertnig, VALIE EXPORT, Sharon Hayes, Matthias Herrmann, Birgit Jürgenssen, Friedl Kubelka, Roberta Lima, Anja Manfredi, Dorit Margreiter, Michaela Moscouw, Laurel Nakadate, Lilo Nein, Carolee Schneemann, Peter Weibel, Hans Weigand, Martha Wilson, Francesca Woodman