Joachim Koester
During his three-month artist residency in San Francisco at Kadist, Joachim Koester is planning a new film that revolves around a Howe sewing machine from 1861. He will also continue the final editing for a Western that he filmed over the summer. The work title of this project is called “The Place of the Dead Roads.” It takes the form of a classic shoot-out with grim postures and menacing stares, where eventually the tension resolved through a strange kind of dance. Physical and mental exploration has been founding elements in Joachim Koester’s research for several years. While exploration was mainly a matter of geography during the 19th century, the 20th century brought the mental exploration of our unconscious, triggered by the discovery of psychoanalysis. Koester is interested in documenting minor events, forgotten by History, in order to reintroduce them into collective memory. Using 16mm documentary films, photographic series or books, his work transforms stories into images and vice versa, appearing as a quest for the invisible and the vanishing. Joachim Koester was born in 1962 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He lives and works in New York. Joachim Koester is in residence at Kadist in San Francisco from September 4 to November 29, 2013. The residency is co-hosted with Headlands Center for the Arts. From November 15, 2013 to February 16, 2014 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Kadist and YBCA co-present an exhibition by Joachim Koester in the upstairs galleries. More details to be announced. On October 9, 2013 at Headlands Center for the Arts, Kadist and Headlands co-present Tarantism (2007), a black and white 16mm film installation by Joachim Koester. Dinner is at 6:30pm, followed by a conversation with Joachim Koester at 8pm. Cost of dinner is $25, and the conversation is free.