Detlev Fischer: Biographical note

I was born in 1961 and grew up in Ratzeburg, northern Germany. I studied art at the Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg and at Coventry Unversity, School of Art & Design. After focusing on experimental film, I developed ‘Schwamm’ (sponge), an extensive open-ended interactive and collaborative project including texts, drawings and scripts. Schwamm was included in several exhibitions, for example, Welt als Schrift (Literaturhaus Hamburg, 1990), Interface I (1990, International symposium for electronic art and creativity, Hamburg), Wörter brauchen keine Seiten (1993, Literaturhaus Wien), and Künstliche Spiele (1993, Literaturhaus München).

After studying and working in Coventry, UK between 1992 and 1996, I turned to photography and montage. This resulted in several series of photographic composites simulating street photography snapshots, such as ‘Strassenszenen’ and ‘Hafentreppe’. Around this time, I abandoned (for good?) interactive and conversational art (see also Laikologie, in German).

In the most recent work such as ‘Secret Ballet’ (composed between 2000 and 2004 and published by Salon Verlag) I have used my memory as a ‘body of resonance’ that helps a large repository of dictionary example sentences settle into a narrative structure. Writing proper has been replaced by the placement of found sentence elements within an expanding body of text in response to the resulting modulations of meaning, exploring their subtly dislocating or disquieting co-existence. The result reflects on a material level the preoccupations and ideologies of the 70’s and 80’s from which the example sentences are largely drawn.

Currently (2008) I work on another novel (working title Petrification) which may take a few more years to mature.

The latest visual art work, such as the computer-based drawing ‘The rug’, also employs a resonance approach.

I currently live in Hamburg, Germany, with his partner and two children. You can contact me if you wish.