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 In addition to the formal strategies, there’s an array of historical references that bring the same concerns to the fore, including a piece by piece architectural render of the Ise Shrine, which is demolished and rebuilt every 20 years as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...

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...

Untitled (Men)
© » KADIST

Matt Lipps

2011

In the series Horizons (2010), Lipps uses appropriation to riff on Modernism’s fascination with abstract form...

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...

EASTER MORNING
© » KADIST

Bruce Conner

2008

Unlike many of his earlier films which often present poignant critiques of mass media and its deleterious effects on American culture, EASTER MORNING , Conner’s final video work before his death in 2008, constitutes a far more meditative filmic essay in which a limited amount of images turn into compelling, almost hypnotic visual experience...

Execution Changes #22
© » KADIST

Julian Hoeber

2011

Every work in Hoeber’s 2011 series Execution Changes is titled in alphanumeric code...

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...

Temps mort
© » KADIST

Mohamed Bourouissa

2009

The film called Temps Mort (Dead Time or Time Out) presents an exchange of short video footage assembled into one final edit...

The 139 Best Book Covers of 2023
© » LITHUB

The 139 Best Book Covers of 2023 ‹ Literary Hub Craft and Criticism Fiction and Poetry News and Culture Lit Hub Radio Reading Lists Book Marks CrimeReads About Log In Literary Hub Craft and Criticism Literary Criticism Craft and Advice In Conversation On Translation Fiction and Poetry Short Story From the Novel Poem News and Culture The Virtual Book Channel Film and TV Music Art and Photography Food Travel Style Design Science Technology History Biography Memoir Bookstores and Libraries Freeman’s Sports The Hub Lit Hub Radio Behind the Mic Beyond the Page The Cosmic Library Emergence Magazine Fiction/Non/Fiction First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing Just the Right Book Keen On Literary Disco The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan The Maris Review New Books Network Open Form Otherppl with Brad Listi So Many Damn Books Thresholds Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast WMFA Reading Lists The Best of the Decade Book Marks Best Reviewed Books BookMarks Daily Giveaway CrimeReads True Crime The Daily Thrill CrimeReads Daily Giveaway Log In The 139 Best Book Covers of 2023 We Asked 46 Designers for Their Favorites By Emily Temple December 12, 2023 For what is now the eighth time in a row, I am pleased to present the best book covers of the year—as chosen by some of the industry’s best book cover designers...

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...

¿Quién medirá el espacio, quién me dirá el momento?, 1 (columna alfarero)
© » KADIST

Mariana Castillo Deball

2015

Taking archaeology as her departure point to examine the trajectories of replicated and displaced objects, “Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time?” was produced in Oaxaca for her exhibition of the same title at the Contemporary Museum of Oaxaca (MACO) in 2015...

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 – Deeply, Feeling Filling the World
© » KADIST

Laure Prouvost

2018

Monteverdi Ici – Deeply, Feeling Filling the World by Laure Prouvost is a tapestry that references a video by the artist entitled Monteverdi Ici (2018)...

Stong Sory Vegetables
© » KADIST

Laure Prouvost

2010

In Stong Sory Vegetables , Laure Prouvost explains that she woke up one morning and that some vegetables had fallen from the sky on her bed, making a hole in her ceiling...

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...

Movement
© » KADIST

Li Ming

2014

In the eight-channel video installation Movement , Li Ming uses his body as a prop to interact with different means of transportation...

Weather Forecast
© » KADIST

Guan Xiao

2016

Mixed clips from her collection of thousands of images found online, the three-channel video Weather Forecast is an inquiry into the necessity of a physical movement (a travel) for our identity to transform or change...