The work of German artist Tobias Zielony is based on a complex understanding of his prime medium, photography – one that engages with this art form’s documentary tradition. With attention to the formal aspects of the photographic picture, Zielony’s work zeroes in on the dynamics of the social sphere; an approach that also shows in his contribution for the German pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, in which he portraits refugees and migrants who live in Germany.

For his edition for Texte zur Kunst, which is connected to this long term project, Zielony superimposes multiple levels of form, medium, and our political present. The artist took this digital image during a screening that he organized at B movie in Hamburg, an independent cinema that draws a critically-engaged audience. The photograph captures the silhouette of a man standing in front of a screen, and, subtly, also the concrete spatial conditions within that institution at the moment of the screening – the red and blue halos emit from a lighting system installed on a stage next to the projected image. We further see a shot from the film on view, Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s „Le président“, a parable on the political conditions in Cameroon, where this work has been censored. Screen thus records not only a medial encounter of photography and film, but also the circumstances under which art can intervene politically – for example, through facilitating, making visible, or remembering acts of political resistance.