FACTIONS

Documentary images are a powerful instrument of information and are regarded as the ultimate proof of stated facts. But how is reality documented? By whom? Which iconographies and codes are used? What role do our individual perceptions play in this? Our ‘learnt’ images from the media? In the clamour of images, the boundary between documentation and invention becomes blurred, fact and fiction merge into ‘factions’.

My work FACTIONS deals with the documentary image in the interplay between reality and fiction. It consists of two parts:

Part I: In fact.
Documentary images are selected from the flood of images on the news channels, transformed and reassembled. The drawings in panel form tell stories, that defy clear interpretation and can be read individually by the viewer. Set in context with ‘cut-ups’ from the standardised language of the news. Familiar, iconic and blurred between fact and fiction.

Part II: Fiction becomes reality.
Documentary images of air raids are mixed with stills from action films.
Fiction becomes reality. Reality is fiction. The familiarity of the images overlaps. What did I see first? Where did I learn the language of the images? The translation of the photographic images into charcoal drawings creates a further level of observation. The clouds of smoke from the destruction become ‘painterly’ motifs that can be contemplated. The question: How can or should reality be documented?