Stefan Riebel

A postcard from STEFAN RIEBEL, sent from Berlin Germany. Stefan asked me to write the above dedication on the ground, somewhere in Nebraska City and then sending him the digital image of this writing. We would print a small edition of postcards. So this postcard is a collaborative work of the both of us, and part of Stefan's conceptual series dedication pieces. I wrote the dedication on the alley, right behind my studio in Nebraska City.

Stefan almost exclusivelyworks in series in the field of space-related performance and conceptual art. He focuses on a non-expressive way to deal with information, statements and descriptions and furthermore he to developes interactive and model-like open structures, processes and concepts. All of his works deal with very basic questions, for instance: what art could be, how something turns into art, what sort of significance art could have, how the relation between art and its audience might be..  He is also the co-founder of the "month of performance art - berlin”and the founder of the splendid „institut für alles mögliche (i-a-m) in Berlin - a highly recommend art&residency-space. "i-a-m" runs spaces, organizes events and openes up free space for experiments and tests of all kinds. It can be seen as an organism, an attitude, an idea, an offer on how artistic collaborations / gatherings / society could look like. Last but not least Stefan often collaborates with Ilse Ermen, among other things they created an ongoing postcard-project called "Abwesenheitsnotitzen" (out-of-office noticifications).

Ilse Ermen

A second postacard from ILSE ERMEN, sent from Lampaul Plouarzel, France.  I made a rough translation form German: "fernweh is my very own motivation, i wanted to go away early in my life, only away from here, the lower rhine. someday, finally, around my 20th birthday, after I laying on a sack at home for one year, I packed my little suitcase and took the train to paris, to register for the entrance examination for the local art academy (which was not quite state of the art, already back then), beach the accepted me over there, i stayed for a while, approx. 6 years. during this entire time and the following period I travelled foam a to b  more frequently: across europe and the near east, south america. (although i never pounded the numbers of all the things one should have seen, i hate tourism) movement became my second nature, and if somebody suggests me to travel for recreation i can only laugh. 4 weeks at the very same place are a recreation already. returning to the village, like many people strive for their retirement, would be the equivalent of a death sentence to me."

Ilse i a conceptual artist with a very close realtionship to language, words and a postcards and many other things.  I always enjoy converstions with Ilse, not only because of her very subtle and intelligent sense of humor.  She really has an eye for the concealed, but nevertheless interesting oddities of life and language. I already recieved another Fernweh postcard from Ilse: here. 
http://www.ilse-ermen.com/