Bowerbirds – a docufiction

History of the work

Six round pictures are spread over the whole site of the university's animal hospital (Tierspital) at Bremgartenstrasse 109. They are digital prints, each 140 centimetres in diameter, and together they form “Laubenvögel – eine Dokufiktion” by Istvan Balogh, made in 2004 and 2005. On Wikimedia Commons the work also carries the English title “Bower Birds – A Docufiction”.

On his website Balogh lists the work as an on-site project for the Tierspital Bern, 2004–05, and names the practice Schär Burri Architekten AG in Bern in connection with it. The accessible sources give no further details on the commission or a competition.

Istvan Balogh works with photography and video and has Swiss and Hungarian roots. He was born in Bern in 1962 and studied from 1984 to 1988 at the art school in Zurich now called ZHdK, where he has also taught since 1992; since 2012 he has also taught at the Lucerne university of applied sciences (HSLU). According to his CV he received a studio residency at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome in 1998, a grant from the UBS Kulturstiftung in 2003 and an artist's monograph from the Canton of Bern in 2008. He has exhibited in Paris, Zurich, Basel and Bern, among other places.

The subtitle “Docufiction” fits what the curator Andreas Fiedler writes about Balogh's photography: Balogh works with an analogue camera and does not alter his pictures on the computer, yet the reality shown is staged through and through. He fixes location, extras, gestures and props precisely in advance and only then releases the shutter. In this way the scenes look as if the camera had simply come across them. Walking across the site, you can look for the six round pictures and ask yourself what in them is documented and what is staged.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Istvan Balogh: On-Site-Art, Tierspital Bern, 2004-05 · Istvan Balogh: CV/Exhibitions · Istvan Balogh: Thresholds and Gaps, 2000-08 (Text Andreas Fiedler) · Wikimedia Commons: Installation Bower Birds - A Docufiction (Istvan Balogh 2004/05)