Xaver Könneker
based in Rotterdam, NL.
is a visual artist, teacher, and researcher who intertwines cultural theory with photographic practice. His work often reflects on the relationship between mortality, identity, structures and visual culture. The quote by Lucian Freud: “The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.” strongly resonates with the way he thinks and works. Intimately related to this, his work investigates the socially conditioned modality of looking, probing into how our social, professional, and political backgrounds frame perception and perceivability.CV
Kodak Knows No Dark Days (Video Installation)
In 'Kodak Knows No Dark Days' Xaver Könneker examines the peculiar intersection between the smile, death and the practice of forensic odontology. By tracing the history of Kodak and its unintended link with forensic identification, he invites us to radically rethink what it means to smile for a photograph.
Documentation of three channel video installation presented at KABK Graduation Show 2022 in The Hague (NL).
Forensic Gazes, Death and The Photographed Smile (Printed Publication)
Thesis publication exploring the history of Kodak, smiling for a photograph, the class politics of dentition, grief, remembrance and forensic identification..
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Publication printed with comcolor.
Foam Magazine #57
In 2020, Xaver Könneker’s collage work from his preliminary visual research on the link between the smile, forensic identification and the history of Kodak was featured on the cover of the Foam Magazine #57: IN LIMBO.
Printed on selected specialised paper.
Article 1 (ongoing)
Tinder in Lebanon reveals a strange tension between militarized borders and virtual space. Leisurely swipes on the dating app are interrupted by profiles of Israeli soldiers posing in military uniforms.
Tinder’s radius fails to take into account that Lebanon and Israel are two nations at war. But within this failure, forbidden gazes of desire open up.
not the words of someone who kneels (ongoing)
In the ongoing project ‘not the words of someone who kneels’, Xaver Könneker tries to grapple with the phenomena of social alienation and lonely deaths, in the process exploring how ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra, an anthem to the uncompromising ‘I’, became the most popular funeral song in Western Europe.
