FRANZISKA OSTERMANN: THE FUTURE OF SELFIE FEMINISM

Franziska Ostermann: We had a computer in the basement that would connect painfully slowly to the internet. One gesture might take several hours. The time of waiting transformed into an intermediate space, linking different conventions of reality that I was just beginning to discover.

This state of in-between, the aura of the internet, cast its spell on me. I photographed myself and could feed these images into the computer, unlike my body, which could not physically enter the internet. I captured images in my environment, responded to it, and brought these gestures and positions to the computer. Words and images merged on the screen, whether on websites or in the image editing program. Through its own surface, I could control the computer, explore its body, and understand the ends and limits of my own.

After I realized the images, I taught myself to edit and manipulate them, to adjust them, and to understand them in their new, digital environment.

FO: Early in my artistic journey, I began exploring the concept of pictorial space. I recognized that every photograph, whether digital or film, is inherently a manipulation—a personal and mechanical framing of a past moment.

I took these photographic fragments, these interpretations of reality, and pushed them further. By allowing pieces of different subjects to intersect in my work, I discovered a vast potential for reimagining space and time.

This process opened up exciting possibilities. It allowed me to challenge viewers' perceptions, inviting them to see familiar subjects in new, unexpected ways. Through these experiments, I found that I could subtly disrupt ingrained habits of visual perception, creating images that both intrigue and slightly disorient the viewer.

FO: Images and words have accompanied me for as long as I can remember. As soon as I could write, I began filling entire stacks of notebooks with stories. For the first time, I felt what it was like to move within my own thought worlds and draw from them, to wander through what I had created, and to lose myself in it. I painted, wrote poems, and then discovered digital photography, disappearing into it for several years and following it to art school. The poems returned shortly after and stayed.

What emerges in this series is an articulation of an inherent truth: text and image exist not as parallel universes but as intertwined dimensions of a singular artistic consciousness. This multidimensionality, always present in my practice, now crystallizes into a more precise form. Rather than marking a departure, this work represents an organic evolution, where diverse modes of expression converge into a unified artistic language, each medium enriching and illuminating the other.

A poem has as many versions as it has readers, perhaps even more. I explore the gaze for the depth of meanings that a poem holds, descend into the poem, and bring forth what had remained unseen before. The poem is not entirely readable; each video refers to a paragraph. The viewers can thus lose themselves in individual nuances, explore them, recognize new reading directions, and move around a text as if around a body.

FO: It seemed as if the outside world wanted to keep my disciplines separate. I attended readings, literary houses, and bookstores, where I didn’t encounter photography. I visited galleries, museums, and art associations but found few poems there. I wondered why these disciplines were lived so separately from each other when, for me, who had come to understand myself as a media artist, they lay so naturally side by side.

Their separation lies in their history, which continues to this day. During the Renaissance, art became increasingly professionalized, leading to specializations. Artists evolved from craft guilds to academies, while writers turned to universities and literary circles. This institutional separation created different paths for education, criticism, and presentation. These structures remain present today.

Media art is inherently a very interdisciplinary genre. Artists like Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Claude Cahun, Stéphane Mallarmé, Roni Horn, Eduardo Kac, and others paved the way for a connection between disciplines. As Ana Maria Caballero postulates, "a poem is a work of art."

This connection is very close to me, and I live it in my work. With ORE OF THE INTERNET, I make a statement for the union of media.

FO: Reading and writing aren't disappearing; they're evolving. The shift from physical books to digital formats doesn't lessen these activities; it transforms them. Whether on paper or screen, reading and writing remain social practices, deeply connected to how we interact with the world and with each other.

The book is a special, tangible space where poetry comes to life, but digital platforms offer new and exciting possibilities, too. They're not replacing books; they're adding to our options for engaging with text.

What's crucial is a reader's willingness to engage with complex writing, whether it be poetry or prose. This openness to challenging texts is more important than the format in which they are presented. Whether a poem reaches a reader through a printed page or a digital device is perhaps less significant than the connection that forms between the words and the reader.

In essence, it's not about choosing between traditional and digital forms; both have their place in our reading and writing experiences. The key is to embrace the diversity of formats available to us, recognizing that each offers unique ways to explore and express ideas.

FO: I began writing at an early age, and then photography came into my life and became a focal point for a while. I had to truly engage with both of them, intensively and deeply. As I became fluent in both, I wished to think of them as part of a whole, combined in the artistic process. They have always been forms of art for me; the separation between the two, nurtured in different institutions historically, never made sense to me.

Both in content and form, my working method is very similar across different media. When I work with words, I follow the same intuition as I do with images. I collect material—a kind of database in a notebook—then go back to it and become a sculptor: shaping, reducing, combining, adding, distilling, and breaking open the words, moving within them. The text lies encrypted before me and gradually reveals itself, word by word, as I spend time with it.

FO: The anatomy of language fascinates me deeply. I published my first poetry collection when I was 25, and I have just finished the manuscript for my second poetry collection during a residency at the Literary Colloquium in Berlin.

Based on the poems I wrote in Berlin, I developed the web-based installation INTERVERSE: A VIRTUAL GARDEN OF WORDS AND FORM for the digital exhibition space wwwforum. Using Unreal Engine, I first realized it as a 360-degree application.

I transformed the poems into digital sculptures, creating a virtual garden that unfolds between them. The text becomes a tangible body, with words floating in space and the reverse sides of poems made visible, inviting new perspectives. Music, soundscapes, spoken word, and piano compositions create a resonant atmosphere, immersing the viewer deeper into the garden formed by these works. A hashtag becomes the skeleton of a poem, while an asterisk moves through the landscape, carrying with it a soundscape—a text recorded in my voice. Poems emerge as living entities, their form and meaning shifting as you explore them from different angles. A figure roams the garden, and as you draw near, the poem that it continuously recites becomes audible.

For the exhibition MATERIAL POETRY, which will be shown at virtual HEK under the curation of Giorgio Vitale from Synthesis Gallery, I developed a poetry sculpture that revolves around the relationship between photography and words. My video work CAN YOU HEAR ME? will also be on display, and I am elated to be part of such a visionary show among wonderful artists such as Ana María Caballero, Sasha Stiles, Eduardo Kac, and Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley.

FO: White, in my artistic journey, has been far from limiting. Depending on the color theory you follow, it can represent either the absence or the presence of all colors at once. This ambiguity captivated me during a pivotal moment in my creative development—my first year of art school. I found myself equally attracted to this non-color as I was to self-portraiture. For a decade now, white clothing and self-photography have been inseparable threads woven into my artistic practice.

Yet, even as I embraced white in my attire, I couldn't fully mask the inherent colors of my body—my skin tone, eye color, and hair. These natural hues persistently found their way into my work, creating an intriguing contrast with the white canvas of my clothing. This interplay between the stark white and my body's colors became a defining element of my artistic expression—a visual dialogue between uniformity and individuality.

FO: When I photograph myself, I become two entities at once: the photographer and the subject. This duality exists simultaneously in the same space, with the camera acting as both a bridge and a divider between these roles. By embodying both perspectives, I gain a unique viewpoint and greater control over the image-making process.

The act of photography inherently involves a power dynamic. Typically, the subject feels objectified by the camera's gaze and the photographer's intent. However, by dividing this power between myself and the camera, I create a more balanced interaction.

FO: When I discovered Anika Meier's column in Monopol Magazine in 2018, a new world unfolded before me. I saw women photographing themselves with their smartphones, breaking away from viewing habits that had been dominant until then. Historically, women were mostly portrayed and shown by men, who held the power to control the camera. Now, women were empowering themselves and offering the female gaze as a counterpart; the selfie became a feminist act. In the iridescent, intense colors of the internet, they claimed space for themselves. These post-internet feminist artists, such as Arvida Byström, Signe Pierce, Leah Schrager, and Juno Calypso, inspired me greatly. I wanted to enter the space they were unlocking and join them in expanding the territory that women possessed.

While the selfie has now become an everyday tool of female self-assertion, the tension between female and male gazes on the female body remains relevant today. One need only think of the biases that AI algorithms unreflectively deepen. To get an image of a woman, one must specify 'female' in the prompt, since most image-generating algorithms default to depicting humans as male.

The need to defend the female gaze and the self-determined view of the female body, establishing it firmly in the world, has lost none of its relevance or urgency even today.

FO: Back in 2022, the tools to instantly animate photographs weren’t available to me. Every movement was manually crafted—a process that, in hindsight, possesses its own unique beauty. The work intentionally explores the fragile essence of human life—those subtle, almost imperceptible movements that separate the living body from death or, for that matter, from photography. Small gestures like the flexing of knuckles, the blink of an eye, or the rhythm of breathing are inherently stripped away when a body becomes a photograph. I sought to synthesize and reintroduce these delicate indicators of life back into the still image.

Today, seeing photographs in motion has become part of our visual lexicon, but it’s often experienced through streamlined, automated techniques—something quite different from the manual method I used in ON PHONES. It's exciting to see that this work still has the power to challenge viewers, gently pushing against their usual ways of seeing. It continues to spark new perspectives, preventing our visual habits from becoming too comfortable.

FO: Our understanding of photography is evolving, particularly where digital and traditional forms intersect. While the fundamental act of capturing light remains constant, the boundaries of what we consider a photograph are expanding. This shift in perspective challenges us to reconsider long-held assumptions about the medium.

As images enter digital realms and virtual spaces, the distinctions between analog, digital, and computer-generated imagery are becoming less clear-cut. It's worth questioning: What purpose did the divide between analog and digital ever truly serve? And in today's world, is the camera still a necessary tool for creating what we consider a photograph?

Annekathrin Kohout, in an interview for Photonews Magazine, offered an insightful perspective. She suggested distinguishing between "photographs"—images made with traditional photographic techniques—and "photographic images"—images that appear photographic but may be created through other means. This distinction could serve as a useful framework for understanding the evolving landscape of image-making.

Clinging too tightly to established categories might limit our appreciation of new forms of visual creation. The future of contemporary photography lies not in changing the medium itself but in our ability to embrace broader definitions and explore the expanding possibilities of what we consider photographic art.

By being open to these new interpretations, we create space for innovative approaches to image-making, potentially leading to a richer, more diverse world of visual expression.

FO: Absolutely. The question of whether photography is still tied to the camera is becoming more common, especially with the rise of AI-generated art that draws inspiration from photographic history.

Initially, there was a lot of skepticism, particularly from traditional photography enthusiasts; however, this resistance is gradually softening. Now, we're seeing more nuanced discussions emerge, especially in progressive circles where this topic has been explored for some time.

It's worth noting that photography itself has a long history of facing doubt and being unfairly excluded from the art world. So, it's not surprising that AI-generated art is encountering similar challenges as it emerges and takes shape.

This parallel between photography's past struggles for acceptance and the current debates around AI art is interesting. It reminds us that new forms of visual expression often face resistance at first but can eventually gain recognition and reshape our understanding of art.