Monster in a Snow Globe: Biographies as Data Physicalizations

The lives and works of artists inscribe themselves into the cultural, material and media environments of their times, and some of them leave traces living with us in perpetual presence. Similar to the arts, the means to study and document such biographical inscription processes are under constant development: From the heroic accounts of Renaissance artists to feminist visualizations of co-existing urban subjects we have seen the arts and humanities’ methods portfolio evolve. In this context, the artwork showcases how the intangible and ephemeral lives of artists can be brought into the physical presence of material exhibition spaces. To that end, it builds on the visualization framework of time geography and remodels biographies diagrammatically as three-dimensional trajectories, drawing unique curves into a translucent space-time sculpture. Focusing on the life and work of the Austrian painter Herwig Zens (1943-2019), the data sculpture shows major steps and movements of his career. Over many decades, Zens kept a multimodal diary and etched logbook-like notes on art projects and his teaching activities, encounters with other artists, collectors and gallery owners, as well as travel impressions on copper plates. A complete print of the diary from 2005—which Zens referred to as “monster” due to its sheer informational and productional complexity—is considered the longest etching in the world at 40 meters. In lieu to this artifact, the sculpture translates the ‘monstrous’ complexity of a modern-day biography into a distant reading object, oscillating between an epistemic image and a kid’s toy—similar to snow globes which are used to contain memorable figures or sites, and which have been invented in Vienna at the end of the 19th century. Acknowledgements: The European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme partly supported related research and development under the project No. 101004825.

Webpage: dataquaria.com/?sample=zens

Artists bio