Michael Schaefer

Redner Speakers Artist Statement

Artist Statement: The Speakers (Die Redner)

„In fact, isolated, silent, voiceless individuals, without either the capacity or the power of making themselves heard and understood, are faced with the alternative of keeping quiet or of being spoken for by someone else.“
(P. Bourdieu, Delegation and Political Fetishism)

When representatives hold speeches journalists take pictures of them. The content of the speeches however can not be recorded on these images which thus are reliant solely on the appearance and gestures of the speakers. The photographs are snapshotlike portraits, fished out of the visual stream of socially significant stagings. In essence their validity is very limited but by failing so obviously they also point out in particular the muteness (and stillness) of photography.

I am restaging this genre of images with protagonists which appear unusual in the role of a speaker or spokesperson. They are part of the fringe of society and – in terms of Bourdieu’s analysis – voiceless.

M. Schäfer, 2009