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Since 1982, Ottmar Hörl develops photo concepts titled > Landscape
for Sprinters<. To realize these concepts, he equips cameras with
tractor motors and switches enabling these cameras to take independent
3.5 photos per second in situations which are beyond human influence.
For his work > The Large Vertical< a camera was thrown from the roof
of a 160 meter high house in downtown Frankfurt. It took pictures from
the time it was thrown until it hit the ground. For his work >The Large
Diagonal or Hommage ā Beckmann< a hammer thrower hurled the camera from
the center of the Iron Catwalk diagonally towards downtown Frankfurt
taking pictures until it fell into the Main river. Other photo series
titled >Horizontal Rotation<, >Duel in the Municipal
Forest<, >Sightseeing< or >Falzarego< developed during which additional
options of automated picture taking were tested like attaching the
camera to a rim of a car tire, gun shot at the lens of an automatically
triggered camera, throwing cameras from planes and from a cable railway.
The photo series >Landscape for Sprinters< is an excellent form of
artistic demonstration which should be settled in the area between
landscape painting and sculpture. In contrast to traditional landscape
painting Hörl uses unusual means. He totally refrains from using an
individual artistic signature and the corresponding material (paint
and brush) and traditional means of photography. Because it is not
the eye of the photographer capturing the landscape with the lens but
the camera independently captures the landscape clipping. Ottmar Hörl
thus radically automates the creative designing process. He follows
the manufacturing process used in merchandise production and thus
expands the creative means by automation. Similar to other areas the
individual here only designs concepts and leaves the execution to machines.
Ottmar Hörl therefore belongs to the artists who do not try to flee today's
problems by escaping into the past but instead attempts to find appropriate
creative ways of expression, broaches the issue with the help of his camera
concepts >Machinizing and submission of the Earth< which is coupled with
the >>Diminishment of individual creative Options< < (A. Leroi-Gourhan).
The individual has neither control nor influence on occurrences regarding
not only his existence but the future of the human race. Accordingly,
Hörl abstains from individual control of the creative development process.
He does not intervene in the individual photo design but only activates
the then automated process. The results are photo series capturing continuous
motion sequences. The camera is only the tool thrown into space. With it,
lines and figures are written which surround rooms and space and are thus
imaginary sculptures. With his photos, Ottmar Hörl reacts to present spacial
experience. With continuously faster means of transportation distances are
covered at a speed which fails to recognize single sections of landscapes
but as uninterrupted sequences of undistinguishable impressions. The
acceleration of movement destroys space as an experience. Hörl thematizes
a room which in dependence on increasing mobility shrinks to a point where
all our journeys have already taken place and turn into
an >Immobility< >>which is no longer this non-movement but to the
contrary that of the potential ever presence, that of an absolute
mobility which destroys its own space by crossing it untiringly and
without any problem<< (Jean Baudrillard).
Ingrid Mössinger (1989)
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Photo: Alexander Beck, Frankfurt
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