Magic Insta Material:
A Workshop on Selfies and Portraits (for general audiences), with Anna Ehrenstein

How do I represent myself? How do I represent others? In a workshop on representation, we look at historical and contemporary selfies and portraits together and discuss our shared experiences and ideas of representation. How do rappers, witches, insta-influencers, artists and politicians show themselves?

In the second part of the workshop, we decide whether to create a self-portrait, photograph each other or ask passers-by on the street. We are experimenting with small changes in the photo through different textiles in the background, combine our photographs with magical questions, spacey virtual reality filters or trippy hashtags and turn the entire representation game on its head. Using our smartphones as an artistic medium and taking a look at all the possibilities of the communicating camera that we constantly carry with us.

In the last part of the workshop, we deal with the collective selection of work, collaborate together both digital and analog and look at how the narration behind the portrait unfolds.

Mentor

Anna Ehrenstein works in transdisciplinary artistic practice with an emphasis on research and mediation. She is using photography, video, installation or sculpture to reverberate the intersections and divergences of high and low cultures and their socio-economic and political constitutions.

Born in Germany with Albanian blood and heritage realities and reflections around migration-related visual culture and diasporic narrations form her main focus due to her own intercultural experiences. She studied photography and media art and currently started post-gradual studies, while exhibiting internationally for example at the Centquatre in Paris, the Month of Photography in Los Angeles, the Rencontres de la Photography in Arles or the Shang 8 Gallery in Beijing.

In her practice as an art mediator she priorities working with varied social groups for example as part of the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art or within the Young Arts Neukölln Art Center in Berlin.

Upcoming shows include amongst others Museum Winterthur in Switzerland, Museum für bildende Kunst in Leipzig and Bazament in Tirana.