The Haus am Waldsee, initially designed as a private villa in 1922, was turned into an art venue in 1946. Beautifully situated in the nature idyll, far in the southwest of Berlin, the place today hosts several participating artists of the biennale. Walking through the exhibitions, however, it is very hard to keep focus on art. The scenery in the windows at some point absorbs one completely. Admiring garden and nature, I constantly had to remind myself to switch back to the artworks. This relationship is also discussed in the work of the German artist Patrick Alan Banfield, exhibited in the villa.
We fulfill our needs through the abundance of land, which in its turn raises new ideas and desires in humans and inevitably leads to the development of a new sort of needs- to alter this land. In his artistic practice, Banfield focuses on the socialization of ”nature” and the poetics of identity.
His two-channel video and audio installation vyLö:t (2012) starts as a dialogue between concrete housing blocks on the one screen and nature on the other, which gradually develops into a monologue of human desire, decisions, and creations. Following the narrative from one screen to another, the viewer follows how the untouched land gets transformed into the straight cutting lines of concrete buildings and vice versa. The video work creates a platform for asking questions as well as the understanding that to every action there is reaction. But what kind of reaction will be proper here?
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https://www.artslant.com/ber/articles/s ... hotographyTucked away in the stiflingly tranquil and well mannered venue is Patrick Alan Banfield's vyLö:t (2012), a two channel video installation in which large screens face each other. One screen depicts imagery of rampantly overgrown woodland that looks at times like tropical rainforest, the other, modern suburban housing that seems to be becoming slowly overwhelmed by nature (as well as by the imagery of the opposite screen, as if slowly mirroring it and succumbing to its madness). The close up and macro positioning and slow pans and zooms of the lingering camera play with and exaggerate scale and there is a sense of being dwarfed by the subjects of the camera's gaze.
The buttressed roots of trees are mirrored in the repeated buttress motifs on the balconies on a modern block of flats that sits nestled in vines like a rediscovered Mayan temple. Brutalist concrete is smothered by painterly streaks of mildew and lichen; mortar oozes from between brickwork like primordial mud.
The inhabitants of this world are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they have been driven mad by the awe and sublimity of this romantic vision of nature and have long since run off, screaming naked into the woods. Maybe they have been omitted for the viewers’ sake, for our own romanticized vision of unbridled nature?
The tense soundtrack of layered pseudo-tribal beats and pining synthesizer keys alludes to the movie soundtrack of thrillers and horror movies. It whips up expectations of conflict, creating narrative beats that diffuse without climax. Within the context of the exhibition it feels like this is parodying notions of intrepid colonial exploration and preconceptions of an exotic world—discovering in the process a more ordinary, parochial heart of darkness.
https://miamirail.org/visual-arts/berlin-biennale-8/Patrick Alan Banfield is a young German artist working with time-based media. He presented a mesmerizing two-channel video and sound installation, “vyLö:t” (2012). Two screens face each other. On one, the viewer looks at stunning forest vista in the Taunus mountain, north of Frankfurt; on the other: long tracking shots of concrete housing blocks with menacing façades. Banfield brings to the fore the timeless dichotomy between the natural and the built environment. While the visuals provided a dramatic setting, it was the soundtrack—a collaboration between the artist and Sascha Blank—that made the video so compelling.
https://db-artmag.com/en/81/feature/go- ... nale-2014/Patrick Alan Banfield, who studied at the Städelschule, shows how old the modernist residential buildings of the 1960s have come to look; his video installation juxtaposes the austere cement architecture with impressions from the forests of the Taunus: knotted roots, rain-drenched ferns, tree stumps. At first glace an apparently flat dichotomy between nature and culture, the work turns out to be an evocative scenario with apocalyptic undertones: devoid of people and with crumbling facades and plants that have long since begun reclaiming their territory.
Banfield’s video screens almost spill out of the rooms they are squeezed into. Most of the works shown at Haus am Waldsee, however, are living-room-sized formats and possess a “private” character of art that the curator seeks to underscore here.
https://rheaboyden.com/2014/07/26/revie ... iennale-8/One exhibit that spoke to me at Haus am Waldsee was a two-channel colour film and sound installation by German-born artist Patrick Alan Banfield. The pieces in each venue, according to the curator, are meant to reflect their surroundings. One screen showed enticing upclose shots of nature and woods and the other screen low-rent apartment blocks in Germany. This made me think of leaving my German apartment and moving back to Ireland. A return to nature and my rural roots. The piece was accompanied by very soothing music which made me relax and forget the hot day outside.
http://www.getidan.de/kritik/ingo_arend ... austariertAuf seiner Biennale sind es aber gerade die Momente des poetischen Szentismus, die so nachhaltig wirken, dass diese Behauptung schon fast wieder glaubhaft wird. In seiner Zweikanal-Video-und Klanginstallation vyLö:t von 2012 führt der deutsche Filmemacher Patrick Alan Banfield Bilder zweier extreme langsamer Kamerafahrten parallel. Links schaut man auf die Fronten brutalistischer Betonarchitektur der Nachkriegsmoderne mit ausgewaschener Ablaufrinne, rechts auf das Chaos organischer Formen im Wald eines hessischen Mittelgebirges. Mitunter scheinen sich die Formen jedoch derart anzunähern, dass die Frage, was Natur und was Kultur ist, zu verschwimmen beginnt.
https://lieberweltgeist.wordpress.comPatrick Alan Banfields Arbeit wurden heftig kritisiert. Zu einfach sei es, Nadelwald und brutalistische Architektur aufeinander prallen zu lassen. Die Kritik ist allerdings etwas vorschnell, auf die seltsam belebten Betonblöcke und den Sound wird dann gar nicht mehr eingegangen.
Die drei Arbeiten einen die schönen Bilder aus der Natur und der feine Sound. Sie alle fragen nach einem Realismus der Geologie, der Ökologie und nach der Welt jenseits des Menschen. Es rücken extrem sperrige Prozesse und Zusammenhänge in den Vordergrund. Jahrmillionen dauert das Entstehen von Gestein und Landschaften. Der Mensch tritt nur als kurze Episode auf in diesen geologischen Prozessen und Epochen. Was hier versucht wird, ist eine Einordnung des Anthropozän in die Erdgeschichte. Die epische Erzählung dazu kommt aus der Zukunft: Einige wenige Jahrhunderte formten die Menschen die Erde. Klimawandel, Ressourcenausbeutung und Umweltzerstörung führten die Zivilisation in den Abgrund. Was dann folgte, die postapokalyptische Welt, das versuchen die Kunstwerke zu simulieren.
https://www.kunstforum.de/artikel/haus-am-waldsee/Gleich neben dem kleinen Springbrunnen versperrt eine Tür den beiläufigen Blick in Patrick Alan Banfield (geb. 1984 in München, lebt in Karlsruhe und Frankfurt) 2-Kanal-Videoprojektion. Der Raum ist dunkel, die Blick in den Park der Villa verschlossen. Auf gegenüberliegenden Wänden sehen wir Filmaufnahmen von Natur und von Stadt. Anders als Panayiotous webt Banfield nicht die Zeiten und Kulturen zu einer bürgerlichen Idylle ineinander, sondern lässt unsere Klischees von wilder Natur und öder Betonwüste, überspitzt wohl auch die von Romantizismus und Moderne geprägten Vorstellungswelten aufeinanderprallen. Die eine Kamera zeigt uns karge Betonbauten der Nachkriegszeit. Pflanzen scheinen die Gebäude zu überwuchern, bedrohlich ragen die Häuser in den Himmel, leere Balkone, verschlossene Rolladen. Von Menschen keine Spur. Zwar sind die Szenen in Karlsruhe und Heidelberg aufgenommen, aber man meint, einen apokalyptischen Science-Fiction-Film zu sehen. Die andere Kamera fährt ähnlich langsam durch einen Wald. Es sind Bilder aus dem Taunus, sie könnten aber auch in einem exotischen Dschungel aufgenommen worden sein: vermooste Baumstümpfe, dichtes Unterholz, freigelegte Wurzeln. Eine Rückeroberung oder ein Urzustand der Welt? Die 16´09-2-Kanal-Installation entstand in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Komponisten Sascha Blank und dem Fotografen Nicolas Geissler.
