»Cartographie dynamique« is a virtual network connecting cities in Japan, Germany, France, China or India with the distinctive photographic works created in each location. Thematic filters are added into the mix, among them Protest, Anarchism, Olympia, Expo, Love Parade, Z.U.S.(Zones urbaines sensibles), and Péripherique. These specify some of the unique features of these cities as well as comparable structural elements that they share, which act, for the most part, as catalysts for revolutionary urbanistic developments. This network originated fifteen years ago, with »Japanese Lesson« (2005), a body of work drawn from a wide range of private and appropriated image sources that has been continually expanding ever since. Beginning as an exuberant visual grammar consisting of shots of the city, portraits, and manga, steeped in the melancholy of the already antiquated hyper-modernity of Japanese “electric towns,” it afforded a more acute view of Europe’s urban structures and evolved via photographic peregrinations through the city into applied psychogeography.
The organization of the »Cartographie dynamique«as a network gives the desultoriness of Sieber & Stuke’s photographic dérives new possibilities of comparison and grants their repeating structures a logical inevitability. The cartography even generates ideas for new ways of mapping urban spaces, as is evident in Sieber & Stuke’s Walk the Walk, which trans-poses the local route from their flat in Düsseldorf to their studio, mapping it street by street onto a new neighborhood in the twinned Chinese city of Chongqing.
Even if today, in a globalized and automated world, the causes of social disruption can be attributed more and more to the invisible mechanisms of economic and political processes, they find visible expression in the physical world of our cities. (Florian Ebner, for »Dec 8 2018, La Ville Lumière«, GwinZegal / Böhm Kobayashi 2021)
Cartographie Dynamique« contains of several series and works of different volume. Some chapters excist as books, artist books in a small edition or unique maquettes. Several works appear as wall-pieces, grids of images, some are extensive installations of photographs and others exist as video-installations. And some are still „work in progess“.
Different chapters of Cartographie Dynamique have been exhibited/published:
2024 »La Ville Invisible« Böhm Kobayashi
2024 »Sakae Osugi« Böhm Kobayashi / Nouveau Palais
2024 »Ruinen der Zukunft« Maison Heinrich Heine Paris
2023 »Le Monde de Demain. A Prologue« Böhm Kobayashi
2022 »Chongqing Express« Zollverein / Ruhrmuseum Essen
2022 »Chongqing Express« Kunsthalle Mannheim
2022 »Peripheren, Verlag Kettler
2022 »Peripheren« Fotofabbrica Prize/Festival Diecixdieci
2021 »Sequence as a Dialogue, Ruins of the Future« Zine
2021 »Indian Defense« Cennail Photo Biennale
2021 »La Ville Lumière« FFT Düsseldorf
2021 »North of Mikawashima« Photopaper 66/67
2021 »Paris Dec 8, 2018, La Ville Lumière« Gwin Zegal
2020/21 »Sanya« and »Walk the Walk« Museum Morsbroich
2020 »Shin Sekai, Neue Welt« Zine Böhm Kobayashi
2019 »Japanese Lesson« Kunsthalle Gießen
2019 »Fotografie neu ordnen« MKG Hamburg
In 2025 we start working on a new chapter of Cartographie Dynamique called Die vertikale Stadt (vertical city). Dealing with the questions of different layer of urban landscapes, the center of this new chapter will be a feature film, including location photographs, storyboards, soundscapes or short video-sequences. Beginning in Paris, the project follows the entire route of Metro Line 14 from Pleyel St Denis to Orly Airport. The tales of the ‘Vertical City’ will take you from Paris via Chongqing to Japan and back to Europe.
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With an ANT!FOTO backstage pass at patreon you have the opportunity to experience the creation of our new work from the very beginning. As part of the process, from Feb 2025 we will post drafts and initial ideas on this platform. You will have the opportunity to see sketches and notes, outtakes, get insights into inspiration, see unpublished photographs or even images that may never be used in the final work.
If you are one of the first 10 subscribers, you will receive one unique instax-print. At the end of each year, we publish a special photo zine exclusively for patreon-subscribers. Katja Stuke & Oliver Sieber
Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber
Katja Stuke (1968) and Oliver Sieber (1966) live and work in Düsseldorf./Germany. They cover a broad spectrum of identities: photographer and artist, curator and initiator of exhibitions, designer and publisher of artist books. Since 2005, they have regularly worked abroad, including artist residencies in Osaka, Tokyo, Cité International des Arts Paris, Chicago, Rotterdam, Chongqing, Sarajevo and Toronto.
Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber have been on the board of the DGPh (German Society of Photography) from 2019 – 2021 and been – together with Stefanie Diekmann – head of the »History and Archive« section. They have been teaching at FH-Dortmund and Folkwang University of the Arts. Currently they are teaching »International Perspectives« at HSD Peter Behrens School of Arts in Düsseldorf and CEPV Vevey.
Works by Katja Stuke & Oliver Sieber are in public and private collections.
In 2017, they won the LUMA Rencontres Dummy Book Award at the Rencontres d‘Arles.
In 2014, Oliver Sieber‘s Imagainary Club was named Book of the Year by the jury of the Paris Photo / Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. Several books of Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber where shortlisted at the Book of the Year Award in Arles.
In 2022 they where awarded »City Artists NRW« Düsseldorf
In 2023 they where »Lauréates des Regards du Grand Paris«
In 2024 they where awarded the MO_Kunstpreis Museum Ostwald, Dortmund
In 2021 ans 2022 they won grants from the public foundations like: Stiftung Kunstfonds, Kunststiftung NRW, VG-Bildkunst and NRW Kultursekretariat.