Versions

2012 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

6:00 minutes

Oliver Laric

location: Berlin, Germany
year born: 1981
gender: male
nationality: Austrian
home town: Innsbruck, Austria

Oliver Laric’s video Versions is part of an ongoing body of work that has continued to evolve and mutate over time. Comprised of several video and sculptural works that share the same title, the Versions series reflects Laric’s key concerns: the mutability of images and objects and the negotiation between original and copy. In this video, we see several 3D renders of recognizable objects and places, while an ubiquitous feminized robotic voice that evokes the domestic familiarity of voice recognition tools such as Siri and Alexa, speaks of issues relating to identity, language, and translation. Formally, these concepts are reflected through strategies of doubling, mirroring, translating, transferring and mimicking: images of ancient Greek busts are reproduced in postal stamps for Mali and Peru; two popular Disney characters dancing side by side reveal how the same motion was used for both of them; and iconic basketball moments are immortalized both through photographs and interpretations in Manga comics. In addition to the formal strategies, there’s an array of historical references that bring the same concerns to the fore, including a piece by piece architectural render of the Ise Shrine, which is demolished and rebuilt every 20 years as part of Shinto belief system of death, renewal, and the impermanence of all things. Another key reference that appears in many of Laric’s videos and sculptural works is the bust of Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, Laric’s interest centered around the proliferation of adaptations of his ancient military treatise Art of War, which have been disseminated globally.


Oliver Laric is a Berlin-based, Austrian multimedia artist whose work is centered around issues of authorship, originality, and ownership—with a specific interest in visual culture in the digital age. His work and broad research addresses an ongoing history of the mutability of objects and images. From ideas of copyright to examples of iconoclasm (the destruction of religious iconography), Laric’s focus is on how objects and images are continually re-represented, appropriated, remixed, augmented and modified. Several of Laric’s work evolve over time, at times relying on the voracious contribution of online communities. From 2006–2012, for example, Laric was part of the project VVORK, an art blog as exhibition space, which gained a large following and led to the group working as a curatorial collective. He has also collaborated with a range of museums to make 3D scans of sculptures available and free to download online. Even his own sculptural practice is often based on versions of classical and neoclassical sculptures, which he then reinterprets. His interest in reinscribing or opening up material, however, is not in the new or hybrid objects that result, but rather the moment of transfer, the metamorphosis of objects into other objects or images, and the endless potential of mutability. That is what Laric tries to capture.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Appropriation Art, » Art That Plays With Scale, » Austria, » Collecting and Modes of Display, » Austrian  
» see more

Sunday (Domingo)
© » KADIST

Rivane Neuenschwander

2010

In this video, a parrot chews on seeds printed with punctuation marks...

Mapa Mundi BR (postal)
© » KADIST

Rivane Neuenschwander

2007

Mapa-Mundi BR (postal) is a set of wooden shelves holding postcards that depict locations in Brazil named for foreign countries and cities...

Sentimentite (First death caused by self-driving car 84/100, from Chapter 9: Tech Futurism)
© » KADIST

Agnieszka Kurant

2022

For Sentimentite Agnieszka Kurant collaborated with Justin Lane, CEO and Co-Founder of CulturePulse, to gather global sentiment data that has been harvested from millions of Twitter and Reddit posts related to 100 seismic events in recent history...

Mimbres pottery kill hole sequence
© » KADIST

Mariana Castillo Deball

Mariana Castillo Deball’s set of kill hole plates are part of a larger body of work problematizing archeological narratives, and drawing attention to the conservation process and its role in recreating an imagined object...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Sunday (Domingo)
© » KADIST

Rivane Neuenschwander

2010

In this video, a parrot chews on seeds printed with punctuation marks...

Mapa Mundi BR (postal)
© » KADIST

Rivane Neuenschwander

2007

Mapa-Mundi BR (postal) is a set of wooden shelves holding postcards that depict locations in Brazil named for foreign countries and cities...

Almohada
© » KADIST

Mateo Lopez

2011

Mateo Lopez uses paper as a medium to conjure personal experiences...

Untitled (City Limits)
© » KADIST

Allen Ruppersberg

1970

Untitled (City Limits) is a series of five black-and-white photographs of road signs, specifically the signs demarcating city limits of several small towns in California...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

SFMoMA Reacts to Super Bowl Win With Promise of Kansas City Barbecue
© » ARTNET

The Museum Bowl wager will bring the famed dish to the institution's restaurant, temporarily...

Weekly Picks: Indonesia (18 – 24 February 2019)
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Weekly Picks: Indonesia (18 - 24 February 2019) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do February 18, 2019 Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Bali, Bandung and Jakarta from 18-24 February 2019 To celebrate the TiTian Art Space’s 3rd Anniversary, the art space and organization presents EXPLORATION , a group exhibition that serves also as an initiative to encourage artists to break boundaries...

Shanghai Biennale Awaiting Your Arrival
© » KADIST

Xu Tan

2000

Shanghai Biennale, Awaiting Your Arrival is an appropriation of the posters made to promote biennial art exhibitions...

Arnolfini censorship row deepens as artists refuse to work with the Bristol institution
© » THEARTNEWSPER

Arnolfini censorship row deepens as artists refuse to work with the Bristol institution Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Censorship news Arnolfini censorship row deepens as artists refuse to work with the Bristol institution The dispute was sparked by a decision to cancel Palestine Film Festival events Gareth Harris 14 December 2023 Share Signatories say that the Arnolfini's cancellation is "part of an alarming pattern of censorship and repression within the arts sector" Courtesy Artists for Palestine UK More than 1,000 cultural figures—including the artists Ben Rivers, Brian Eno and Tai Shani—are refusing to work with the Arnolfini contemporary arts centre in Bristol, UK, after the institution cancelled two events last month as part of the city’s Palestine Film Festival...

Related works from the » 2010's created around » Berlin, Germany  
» see more

Office Voodoo
© » KADIST

Haegue Yang

2010

In addition to Yang’s signature drying rack and light bulbs, Office Voodoo includes various office supplies like CDs, paper clips, headphones, a computer mouse, a stamp, a hole puncher, a mobile phone charger...

Faltenwurf (Stairwell)
© » KADIST

Wolfgang Tillmans

2017

Wolfgang Tillmans initiated the ongoing series Faltenwurf in 1989, representing compositions of unused clothing, with special attention paid to the ways in which they drape and fold...

Masks (Merkel F6.1)
© » KADIST

Simon Fujiwara

2016

Masks is a series of abstract paintings by Simon Fujiwara that together form a giant, fragmented portrait of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s face...

Related artist(s) to: Oliver Laric » Aleksandra Domanović, » Laure Prouvost, » Boris Groys, » Camille Henrot, » Christian Jankowski, » Ed Atkins, » Fiete Stolte, » Frieze Film, » Hito Steyerl, » Jon Rafman  
» see more

View of Harbor
© » KADIST

Jon Rafman

2018

View of Harbor by Jon Rafman mines the latent cultural imaginary surrounding climate change and society’s collective death drive...

Rooftop Routine
© » KADIST

Christian Jankowski

2008

In New York City’s Chinatown, subject Suat Ling Chua’s morning exercise is to practice the hula hoop...

Monteverdi Ici
© » KADIST

Laure Prouvost

2018

Monteverdi Ici by Laure Prouvost is a non-narrative video work that depicts the back of the artist’s naked body standing, with her back towards the camera in a field...

The Parle Ment Metal Woman Welcoming You
© » KADIST

Laure Prouvost

2017

The Parle Ment Metal Woman Welcoming You is a character originated from a series of works combining sculpture and video with a specific role— lying on the floor playing a romantic elevator tune, this Metal Woman welcomes and flirts with viewers in the space where she is posed...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Same Old Crowd
© » KADIST

Li Ran

2016

The four-channel video installation Same Old Crowd departs from the documentation of an unknown city and takes place in an ambiguous temporal and spatial frame...

ONE MILLION (Japanese Yen)
© » KADIST

Kwan Sheung Chi

2012

Kwan Sheung Chi’s work One Million is a video work depicting the counting of bills...

Pointing at Fukuichi Live Cam
© » KADIST

Finger Pointing Worker

2011

During Summer 2011, few months after the nuclear accident, performance artist Kota Takeuchi got a job at the Fukushima Daiichi plant and kept a blog about the labour conditions of clean-up workers...

TWO MILLION (Hong Kong Dollar)
© » KADIST

Kwan Sheung Chi

2013

One Million is a video work depicting the counting of bills...