Besides a strong mediareflexive approach, processual and conceptual strategies are included in their working methods, creating a space for an expanded understanding of photography, where process, practice, technique, theory and the motif itself operate simultaneously on the same level, as equal agents and allies.
Rastls main interests are dedicated to the photographic reproduction of art works as a perfomative act of appropriation. She examines the shifting authorship between artist and photographer by turning them upside down, but also thinks about image related questions arising from the depths of collections and photographic archives of art institutions. In comparison, Rohrauers work often develops project-related, mimicing the procedural methods of scientific processes by setting up semi-fictional but yet personal research scenarios, linking site-specific aspects of a chosen place with comparable aspects of the photographic. She works with shifts between documentary and abstract image aesthetics, always following the interest of transfering her reflexions on photography into different media and formats in order to explore the medium from the distance, observing the transformations that happen inbetween.
Since 2018 they are collaborating in the frame of the project Fotografie als Motiv (together with Caroline Heider and Ruth Horak) – an exhibtion in 2019 and the same called artist book, which is about to be released in November this year. The collaboration will continue within the upcoming project FOTOTECHNIKA, which deals with a performative re-reading of the male-connoted field of photo technique. Rastl and Rohrauer both studied photography at the HGBLVA Vienna, at Friedl Kubelkas School for Artistic Photography and at the Academy of fine arts Vienna.
www.lisarastl.com
www.claudiarohrauer.info
Credits:
image left: Claudia Rohrauer, “Sketch for retake 2018”,from “Object photograph WOOD 1998/2018”, 2018, ©Bildrecht/Rohrauer
image right: Lisa Rastl, “Blue Jeans”, 2020, ©Lisa Rastl