ARTIST STATEMENT

We are the narrative of our own memory and the memory of others about us. This is how our identity is formed in a chronological context.

But today we know that memory is neither true, nor objective, nor complete. We lay traces, collect documents and photographs, and archive them. I see in this an existential doubt: who am I really if I cannot trust my memory and the memory of others? If I leave no traces, did I ever exist?

In the digital age, cloud archives with huge storage volumes are our memory. Algorithms collect vast amounts of data and traces that we leave behind in the infinite expanse of the internet. They find everything and forget nothing. They seem to know us better than we know ourselves. And more than that – they even know with statistical probability what we will do next.
Can they tell us who we are? Can we trust them? Or are these also just distorted images of artificial intelligences whose logic and intentions no one can see through?

The focus of my interest is the human being with his subjective perception and his ability to remember, to forget, to associate and – consciously or unconsciously – to think up his own utopias.

BIOGRAPHY

Eri Kassnel (Erika Kassnel-Henneberg) is a conceptual and media artist. At the center of her interest is the question of the influence of new technologies on perceived reality. Who do we want to be in the face of a society that meanders between the technically possible and the ethically acceptable for the purpose of self-optimization?

Kassnel-Henneberg’s working techniques and means oscillate between the digital and the analog, thus creating aesthetic interweavings as a mirror of our time: video, artificial intelligence, CGI, Polaroid, collage and more.

Erika Kassnel-Henneberg studied restoration at the University of the Arts Bern / CH and Interactive Media at the University of Applied Sciences Augsburg / DE. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in exhibitions and festivals, such as in the Neue Galerie im Höhmannhaus of the Augsburg Municipal Art Collections and Museums with her solo exhibition Uncanny Valley, as well as in FILE – Electronic Language International Festival in Sao Paulo / Brazil.

In 2013, she received the Krumbach Art Prize for her work Home is Somwhere Else. In 2022, she was honoured with the Augsburg District Art Prize for her complete oeuvre. In addition to her artistic work, she is a lecturer and member of various jury committees.