On routines around the world
The artist Anne Kathrin Greiner visited the routinised absurdity exhibition that was part of the UK/Germany 2018 season. Now she reflects on her experience and contrasts her own photographs with the works she saw. Routinised absurdity questions the state of our performance-oriented society that puts effeciency first. At the same time it also sheds a light on the reverses of the permanent functioning of individuals - fatigue, exhaustion and collapse.
The series Midorogaike by Anne Kathrin Greiner (2014-2019) was created during an artist residency in Kyoto, Japan, and forms a "follow-up" to WA (2004), a work that Greiner created as an exchange student of the Royal College of Art in the fall of 2004 in Kyoto.
"While some of the works in routinised absurdity have been created through active interactions of the artists, the work Midorogaike deals in more detail with the local and cultural conditions. However, they share a breaking with the audience's expectations of a performance-oriented and rational society" - Anne Kathrin Greiner
After seeing the exhibition Greiner reflects on her own photographic routine and experiences in a different culture:
"The photographs that I present here were taken during walks around an enchanted forest in the north of Kyoto, Japan. The so-called Midorogaike is perceived to be the scariest space in the city and is only sparsely populated to this day. In summer, when the sticky air doesn't seem to cool down even during the night, young people visit the waterside of the lake for kimodameshi (to test their courage) which is said to be circulated by ghosts." - Anne Kathrin Greiner
