Alba D'Urbano

Alba D'Urbano (born April 13, 1955) is a textile and video artist.

D'Urbano's most notable work was 1995's "hautnah" (close to the skin); a series of garments imprinted with life-size digital photographs of her own skin.[1] After an exhibition in 1999, critics stated she depicted nudity as fashionable, provoked voyeurism, and made skin (the external body) just another interface in a world.[2][3] In addition to her own work, D'Urbano has been a critic and an art philosopher. Since 1995, D'Urbano has been a professor at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, in Leipzig, Germany.

Early life

D'Urbano was born in Tivoli and studied philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome from 1974 to 1978. Her work as an artist was influenced by her affiliation with the 'Distracted Avantgarde' (Klemens Gruber), which sought to bring about a paradigm shift in the relationship between art, politics and mass communication. It was against this backdrop that Alba D'Urbano produced experimental radio programmes for the alternative broadcasting station Radio Gulliver in Tivoli (modelled on stations such as Radio Alice in Bologna and Radio Città Futura in Rome) and founded a feminist group.[4]

In 1979, she enrolled in a course of visual arts studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome under Enzo Brunori, graduating in 1983. Experimental works in collaboration with other artists date from that period. One such fellow artist was composer Alessandro Cipriani with whom she created performances, Super-8 films, and artistic events in public spaces.[5]

Alba D'Urbano moved to (West) Berlin in 1984 and began her studies in visual communication at the Berlin University of the Arts in 1985. In 1989 she graduated as a master student (Meisterschüler-Degree) in experimental film design under Wolfgang Ramsbott. In 1990 she held a scholarship at the Institute for New Media (INM) in Frankfurt am Main, headed by Peter Weibel. It was during that time that she met her future husband, Nicolas Reichelt.[6]

After a lectureship at the Offenbach University of Art and Design (HfG) she was appointed to teach at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig in 1995 where she has since held a professorship in computer graphics,[7] and has taught the class for intermedia since 1998.[8] In 2003–2004 she taught at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano for one academic year. Since 2000 she has curated numerous exhibitions at the national and international level as part of her university duties, addressing political and social issues and incorporating both process-orientated and media-reflective methods.

Artistry

In the 1980s Alba D'Urbano's artistic interest focused on the drastic changes in the perception of reality brought about by the increasingly influential glut of virtual images, which are generated by the mass media and susceptible to manipulation. At the core of her artistic exploration was the relationship between the written word and the new media. Berlin's urban space with its partly truncated communication paths and its insular status provided the setting for her first video works from the series Nur die Augen können (filmed at Checkpoint Charlie, 1985)[9] and Kreis, der (filmed on Ernst-Reuter-Platz, 1987). For the video installations for the series Berlin Kulturstadt Europas she focused on local communication media; in the series of paintings entitled Prometheus she addressed the impoverished human communications and the loss of writing.

In the 1990s Alba D'Urbano turned to "interactive video and computer installations, to which her creative, complex, experimentally enhancing and problem-conscious approach gave significant impetus as a means of artistic impression".[10] In her projects, some of which featured a multiplicity of media (e.g. L'esposizione impraticabile, 1992, '96;[11] Rosa Binaria, 1993–96;[12] Hautnah[13] and Il sarto immortale, 1995–98)[14] she raised the viewer's awareness of mass media and their 'problematic nature without polemic and without affecting the aesthetic evocative force of various media' [Fußnote 2, Künstlerlexikon].[10]

In a bid to counter an overwhelming array of media images, she began to toy with the viewer's expectations. She substituted images with illegible strings of characters and drew the viewer's attention towards the way in which media images are created and the processes they involve. She gained international renown through her multi-part projects Hautnah[15] and Il Sarto Immortale,[16] in which she digitally processed images of her own body and then had them printed onto fabric and transformed into items of clothing to be showcased by models on catwalks. In the interplay between clothing and nakedness she literally exposed the commercial exploitation of women's bodies in the mass media and the fashion industry.

The works she developed jointly with Tina Bara are inspired by feminist standpoints: there, the body is portrayed as a matrix inscribed into which are identities as a cultural and social construct. For the two women artists it is always about the process of allocating normative attitudes and behaviour patterns. In a series of intermedia projects such as Portrait Alba / Tina Ritratto and Bellissima the artists also referenced biographical material. A new added element incorporated by Tina Bara is the subject of the German Democratic Republic's past. The series of portraits entitled Siegerehrungen (2003) for instance features former elite GDR athletes. The project Covergirl: Wespen-Akte (2007-2009) looks at the opposition group Frauen für den Frieden,[17] of which Tina Bara is also a member.

Works in public collections (selected)

Prizes and scholarships / Awards
  • 1987 Grant from the editors of Das kleine Fernsehspiel (ZDF) for the realization of the video Kreis, der
  • NaFög-grant of the Universität der Künste, Berlin
  • Project grant of the Röhm GmbH, Darmstadt
  • 1990 Grant Pépinières of Eurocréation, Paris
  • 2006 Project grant of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes for Eine Frage (nach) der Geste[19]
  • 2009 Project grant of the Stiftung Kunstfonds for Covergirl: Wespen-Akte

Publications
  • D’Urbano, Alba: La Porta. In: Il recinto e il luogo sacro (exhibition catalogue), Sora 1990.
  • D’Urbano, Alba: Al Caro Scomparso. In: Videoinstallationen (exhibition catalogue), Berlin 1991.
  • D’Urbano, Alba: Rosa Binaria. In: Gerbel, Karl; Weibel, Peter (ed.): Ars Electronica 1993, Vienna 1993.
  • D’Urbano, Alba: Der negierte Raum. In: Gerbel, Karl; Weibel, Peter (ed.): Ars Electronica 1994, Linz 1994.
  • D’Urbano, Alba: Hautnah. In: Kunstforum International, Kunstforumverlag Ruppichteroth 1995; also in Fotografie nach der Fotografie, Verlag der Kunst, Munich 1995.
  • D’Urbano, Alba: Stoffwechsel. In: Reindl; Dietzler; Ummels; Broch (Hg.): Art Hansa Spezial, (exhibition catalogue), Salon Verlag, Cologne 1997.
  • Dieter Daniels, Alba D’Urbano: Utopie: Ursprung aller Medien. In: Andreas Broekman, *Rudolf Frieling (ed.): Bandbreite-Medien zwischen Kunst und Politik, Kulturverlag Kadmos Berlin 2004.
  • Alba D’Urbano/Tina Bara/Susanne Holschbach (ed.): Bellissima, exhibition catalogue, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig, 2006.
  • Alba D’Urbano/Tina Bara (ed.): Eine Frage (nach) der Geste, exhibition catalogue Fotohof Salzburg Edition, Salzburg, 2008.
  • Alba D’Urbano: Private Property: all you need... In: LIVRAISON T.11 Multiples et autres/and other Multiples (S. 16-25), Rhinoceros, Strasbourg, 2008/2009.
  • Alba D’Urbano: Erschreckend Schön: Körperpoetik und Körperkonstruktion. In KUNSTmagazin 1005 (p. 8-13), KUNSTverlag, Berlin 2011.

Footnotes
  1. staff. "Erotics of the Artificial". Design Writing Research.org. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  2. Loschek, Ingrid; [translated into English] (2009). When clothes become fashion : design and innovation systems (English ed.). Oxford: Berg. p. 54. ISBN 978-1847883667. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  3. Hammerstingl, Werner. "Gender and representation". Olinda.com. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  4. Klemens Gruber: Die zerstreute Avantgarde. Strategische Kommunikation im Italien der 70er Jahre, Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna 2010.
  6. vgl. http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/werke/esposizione-impraticabile/ und http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/werke/TouchMe
  7. "Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst".
  8. "Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst".
  9. "Videography of Alba d'Urbano".
  10. Günter Meißner (ed.): Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, Vol. 31, Saur Verlag, Munich 2002, p. 181 ff.
  11. "INM - Institut für Neue Medien".
  12. http://90.146.8.18/de/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=8819
  13. http://www.inm.de/people/alba/couture/%5B%5D
  14. "Il Sarto Immortale: The Project".
  15. "Medien Kunst Netz | D\'Urbano, Alba: Hautnah". 2019-07-16.
  16. "Il Sarto Immortale: The Project".
  17. "Goethe-Institut Russland".
  18. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg: Inside Out. Einblicke in Mode Archived 2014-07-25 at the Wayback Machine
  19. "404". Archived from the original on 2014-07-30. Retrieved 2014-08-27.

Further reading
  • Wolff, Thomas: Neues aus der Raumforschung. In: Steiger, Charly (ed.): Sequenz, Frankfurt am Main 1995.
  • Schwarz, Hans-Peter: Touch me. In: Medien-Kunst-Geschichte, Prestel Verlag, Munich 1997.
  • Ingrid Mössinger: Alba D‘Urbano. In: Barbara Wally (Hg.), Skulptur, Figur, Weiblich, (exhibition catalogue), Bibliothek der Provinz, Linz 1998.
  • Wendt, Karin: Experimentum Loci: Virtuelle Räume. In: Hermann, Mertin, Valting (ed.): Die Gegenwart der Kunst, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 1998.
  • Alexandra Kolossa: Il Sarto Immortale. In: Heike Strelow (ed.): Natural Reality, (exhibition catalogue), Dako Verlag, Stuttgart 1999.
  • Gebhard Streicher: Il Sarto Immortale: Display. In: It's now or never, (exhibition catalogue), Transit I – IV, DG eV, Munich 1999.
  • Benthien, Claudia: Haut. Literaturgeschichte – Körperbilder – Grenzdiskurse, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1999.
  • Gertje Maaß: Alba D’Urbano. In: Barbara Hoffer, Valeria Schulte-Fischedick (ed.): Crossfemale, (exhibition catalogue), Berlin 2000.
  • Elisabeth Hartung: Die Zweite Haut – Kunst und Kleidung, (exhibition catalogue), Merano 2001.
  • Michaela Völkel: Inszenierung. In: Wilhelm Hornbostel, Nils Jockel (ed.): Nackt. Die Ästhetik der Blöße, (exhibition catalogue), Prestel Verlag, Munich 2002.
  • Günter Meißner: Alba D'Urbano. In: Günter Meißner (ed.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, Vol. 31, p. 181ff., Saur Verlag, Munich 2002.
  • Wegenstein, Bernadette (Spring 2002). "Getting under the skin, or, How faces have become obsolete". Configurations. Johns Hopkins University Press. 10 (2): 221–259. doi:10.1353/con.2003.0018.
  • Lenoir, Timothy (Fall 2002). "Makeover: Writing the body into the posthuman technoscape: Part two: corporeal axiomatics". Configurations. Johns Hopkins University Press. 10 (3): 373–385. doi:10.1353/con.2004.0003.
  • Mark Hansen: Affect as medium, or the ‘digital-facial-image’. In: Journal of Visual Culture, Vol. 2(2): 205-228, SAGE Publications, London 2003.
  • Petra Leutner: Oberflächen mit Körper. In: Christian Janecke (ed.): Haare Tragen, Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, 2004.
  • Lorella Scacco: Alba D’Urbano. In: Estetica Mediale, Guerini Verlag, Milan, 2004.
  • Alexandra Kolossa: Die Anwesenheit der Abwesenden Alba D’Urbano – Eine Annäherung. In: Alba D’Urbano: Whoami: In ordine Sparso, Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nuremberg, 2006.
  • Hubertus von Amelunxen: Einmal hören. Für Alba. In: Alba D'Urbano: Whoami: In ordine Sparso, Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nuremberg, 2006.
  • Cora von Pape: Kunstkleider. Die Präsenz des Körpers in textilen Kunst-Objekten des 20. Jahrhunderts, Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld, 2008.
  • Ingrid Loschek: Wann ist Mode? Strukturen, Strategien und Innovationen, Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin, 2007.
  • Ingrid Loschek: When Clothes become Fashion. Design & Innovation Systems, Berg Publisher, Oxford, 2008.
  • Jorge Lozano: La Moda: sublime menor. In: Manuel Lucena Giraldo, Ignacio Gonzales Casasnovas (ed.): Amazonas y modelos: Universo femenino y cultura en el siglo XX, Instituto de Cultura, Fundacìon Mafre, Madrid, 2008.
  • Reuter, Jule: Tina Bara/Alba D’Urbano, Covergirl. In: Ralf Eppenede (ed.): Bewegte Welt – Erzählte Zeit 1989-2009, (exhibition catalogue), Goethe-Institute, Saint Petersburg, 2009.
  • Eran Fisher: Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age: The Spirit of Networks, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2010.
  • Océane Delleaux: Le Multiple et les «autres» multiples. Histoire d'une mutation artistique, Europe et Amérique du Nord (1984-2006), L’Harmattan, Paris, 2010.
  • Constanze Küsel: Die Made in der Schokolade; Frankfurt University Press, Frankfurt am Main, 2010.
  • Paolo Bianchi: Alba D’Urbano & Dagmar Varady »wissen – ein Werkkatalog«, in: Kunstforum 225, March–April 2014, p. 320-323
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