Author Description

Like the name of this artists' collective, G.R.A.M. is unideological and denotes a brand rather than the people behind it, which leads to a dissolution of authorship as it is traditionally understood. G.R.A.M. often work with others and outsource the production process, hence their involvement is limited to the concept. Collaborations with other artists from a variety of disciplines also emphasize this idea of extended authorship. During a six-month stay in Los Angeles in 1997, the artists engaged in an in-depth exploration of photography, video, and film media. Using paparazzi photography as a model, G.R.A.M. began a fundamental critique of visual culture as a whole.The appropriation of this particular form of image production and the restaging of specific themes drawn from the mass media led them into a sphere of enormous interest in the art world today. As PeterWeibel wrote in the 2002 G.R.A.M. catalogue wiener blut -nach motiven von...: "the paradox is accomplished: by means of photographic reappropriation with the aid of other actors, the action plunges back into the sphere of performance and is delivered from the dictates of photography." G.R.A.M. Reenactements 1998?2011 is the first extensive survey of G.R.A.M.'s work. With an introduction by one of the most renowned German art and culture theorists, Wolfgang Ullrich, this publication constitutes a critique of the narrative image.