materialoutpost

If we consider the strategy of proximity as the opposite of (ironic) distance when analyzing social processes, then D’Ette Nogle is a master at peeling away fears of coming in contact towards these subjects layer by layer. In her densely researched and material-laden video works, she uses an unconventional route for approaching history, which resembles associative collaging: By confronting a multitude of facts, power structures, works of literature and art, celebrities, theorists, and personal inserts, Nogle creates engaging panoramas that complexly unfold in front of the viewer.

The video work materialoutpost, produced on the occasion of Time Without End, builds on an earlier video work by Nogle, materialschrank (2020). For this, she picked Sigmar Polke’s painting Schrank (1963) and the artistic movement of Capitalist Realism, which Polke co-founded, as a narrative for various post-war historical as well as pop cultural references to enter into an open dialog. As a continuation, materialoutpost finds its starting point in the former U.S. army cinema Outpost in Berlin-Dahlem, also known as “Little America” during the post-1945 U.S. occupation. The title playfully indicates the thematic tenor of the video work in two ways: the Outpost, which in its function as a cinema brought products of cultural output to Berlin, here serves as the basis for episodically following traces of U.S. foreign policies from the postwar period to its idiosyncratic manifestations today by means of narrative modes of popular culture and Hollywood cinema.

The dynamic interlinking of the materials is orchestrated by Nogle’s off-screen voice, which, in combination with rhythmically inserted text commentaries, imbues materialoutpost with the characteristic touch of a didactic as well as compelling lecture performance. There is a method to the way she repeatedly brings her own position as the speaker into focus: as an artist and a teacher, Nogle is interested in the structural and economic conditionality of art production and education, which she considers her own artistic practice embedded in and due to which no outside, distanced perspective is possible. By revealing her point of view, Nogle’s practice thus offers a rich protocol of critical tools to examine the creation, representation, and mediation of historical and social narratives, while opening up vistas of untapped potential underlying the material.