Rooftop Routine

2008 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

4 min 30

Christian Jankowski

location: Göttingen, Deutschland
year born: 1968
gender: male
nationality: German

In New York City’s Chinatown, subject Suat Ling Chua’s morning exercise is to practice the hula hoop. When Christian Jankowski first saw this woman he immediately got the idea to shoot Rooftop Routine . In the short video, Chua leads the group and dictates the movements that each participant has to repeat. Only one person of the group can directly see Chua and thus each person mimics another from roof to roof, altering the choreography after each passage like in a play of “Chinese whispers.” With this performance, Jankowski explores the social organization of a specific context. It brings together people of several buildings in the same project beyond isolation and social barriers of the urban environment. “In a work, new things, unknown things can happen. The important thing is to initiate a project to bring together the right people. Then the mechanism takes unpredictable paths. Until…voila!..the work is done,” says Jankowski.


Christian Jankowski’s practice ranges from photography, films, and performances, involving audiences or often people unfamiliar to contemporary art. He claims that his “main drive always comes from the pleasure of meeting people and working with them.” Through the manipulation of humor, collaboration, popular culture and magic, Jankowski creates links between art and people with a certain simplicity and relevance. Meeting with participants and making negotiations are an integral part of his work, as well as the elements of chance and accident. Jankowski’s work is about life as it is lived. His way of juxtaposing different worlds and subcultures as a way to explore social systems and their organization is both attractive and serious. In one of his early work My Life as a Dove (1996), the artist was transformed into a dove by a magician. This performance introduces one of the recurring themes of his work – transformation and how the artwork may change the way we perceive the world and its organization. Christian Jankowski was born in 1968 in Göttingen, Germany. He lives and works in New York.


Colors:



Related works of genres: » german contemporary artists  
» see more

9 O’clock? (my time is not your time)
© » KADIST

Tobias Rehberger

2007

9’oclock (my time is not your time) pertains to a series consisting of three numbers: 5, 10 and 11 works were made for the exhibition “Signs and messages from modern life” at the Kate McGarry Gallery in 2007...

Eight
© » KADIST

Ulla von Brandenburg

2007

Eight opens with a close up of a painting by Hubert Robert of the Chateau de Chamarande where the film was shot...

7″ Single 'Pop In'
© » KADIST

Martin Kippenberger

1989

7″ Single ‘Pop In’ by Martin Kippenbergher consisting of a vinyl record and a unique artwork drawn by the artist on the record’s sleeve...

Echo 8
© » KADIST

Bettina Pousttchi

2009

For Bettina Poutsttchi’s large-format, site-specific photographic work Echo (2009–10), the four exterior walls of the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin were covered with a digitally edited collage of archival images of the glass-and-steel facade of the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic), which had once been located nearby...

Related works featuring themes of: » German  
» see more

Die Siedlung
© » KADIST

Clemens von Wedemeyer

2004

Die Siedlung is a filmic documentary about the recent shift in housing developments in Leipzig-Grünau in former East Germany and its consequences on some inhabitants...

Percent for Art
© » KADIST

Annette Kelm

2013

Percent for Art is seemingly concerned with “art enrichment” by state or city arts agencies role in it, managing the artist rosters, maintaining public art collections, commissioning artworks, selecting installation sites, among other things for aesthetic and cultural enhancement in both public and private real estate developments...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Martin Kippenberger

1988

Martin Kippenberger’s late collages are known for incorporating a wide range of materials, from polaroids and magazine clips to hotel stationery, decals, and graphite drawings...

Hat with photograph
© » KADIST

Hans-Peter Feldmann

The types of objects Feldmann is interested in collecting into serial photographic grids or artist’s books are often also found in three dimensional installations...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Die Siedlung
© » KADIST

Clemens von Wedemeyer

2004

Die Siedlung is a filmic documentary about the recent shift in housing developments in Leipzig-Grünau in former East Germany and its consequences on some inhabitants...

Percent for Art
© » KADIST

Annette Kelm

2013

Percent for Art is seemingly concerned with “art enrichment” by state or city arts agencies role in it, managing the artist rosters, maintaining public art collections, commissioning artworks, selecting installation sites, among other things for aesthetic and cultural enhancement in both public and private real estate developments...

The Simpson Verdict
© » KADIST

Kota Ezawa

2002

The Simpson Verdict is a three-minute animation by Kota Ezawa that portrays the reading of the verdict during the OJ Simpson trial, known as the “most publicized” criminal trial in history...

John Heartfield and Silvio Berlusconi
© » KADIST

Thomas Kilpper

2009

These two images come from the series called “State of Control” which Kilpper made in the building formerly occupied by the Stasi in Berlin...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

Blind Spencer (Mirror)
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2002

Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...

L'Exposition Lunatique
© » KADIST

L’Exposition Lunatique October 2 – November 14, 2010 With works by: Francis Alÿs, Kennedy Browne, Jason Dodge Hans-Peter Feldmann, Christoph Keller, Julius Koller Anthony MacCall, Roman Ondák, Pratchaya Phinthong...

Minimal Secret
© » KADIST

Voluspa Jarpa

2012

To make Minimal Secret (2012), Jarpa created sculptures based on pages of declassified CIA information about the United States’ involvement in Chile...

Related works from the » 2000's created around » Göttingen, Deutschland  
» see more

Die Siedlung
© » KADIST

Clemens von Wedemeyer

2004

Die Siedlung is a filmic documentary about the recent shift in housing developments in Leipzig-Grünau in former East Germany and its consequences on some inhabitants...

John Heartfield and Silvio Berlusconi
© » KADIST

Thomas Kilpper

2009

These two images come from the series called “State of Control” which Kilpper made in the building formerly occupied by the Stasi in Berlin...

Eight
© » KADIST

Ulla von Brandenburg

2007

Eight opens with a close up of a painting by Hubert Robert of the Chateau de Chamarande where the film was shot...

Silberhöhe
© » KADIST

Clemens von Wedemeyer

2003

Silberhöhe , directed at Halle, located in the former GDR (German Democratic Republic), is the name of a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, which was built in the 70’s and could accommodate more 40,000 people...

Related artist(s) to: Christian Jankowski » Anri Sala, » Mona Hatoum, » John Bock, » Andy Warhol, » Harun Farocki, » Joseph Beuys, » Monica Bonvicini, » Nedko Solakov, » Ai Weiwei, » Hito Steyerl  
» see more

Ghost games
© » KADIST

Anri Sala

2002

Ghost Games , follows the enigmatic dance of crabs “steered” by a flashlight in the night of darkness of a South American beach...

Serious Games 3, Immersion
© » KADIST

Harun Farocki

2009

For Immersion , Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Will Rogan and John Herschend
© » KADIST

Artists Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan presented and discussed each other’s work...

The Training
© » KADIST

Since November 2012, Kadist artist-in-residence, Zhou Tao (b.1976) has been working on his new film, After Reality , which will be presented in conjunction with Collector (2012)...

What’s Shanghai’s art scene like in late 2023? Absolutely buzzing – from Art021 to the Shanghai Biennale, things are looking busier than ever
© » SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

What’s Shanghai’s art scene like in late 2023? Absolutely buzzing – from Art021 to the Shanghai Biennale, things are looking busier than ever...

A Little Bit More Virtual Than Reality, A Little Bit Warmer than Craziness, A Little Bit Whiter Than Darkness, A Little Bit Longer than A heavy Sigh
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2012

The lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image...