TOKYO STAR

With their work Fischer & el Sani focus on transitory spaces and vacuum situations in urban environments, collective memory and vision in various media such as film, video, installation and photography. They critically reflect the rise and fall of modernity, the intense and uncanny relationship between our contemporary society and utopian projects that have driven the evolution of our history, from the past to the future, or the anachronistic merging of both ends. Their work is a permanent pursuit of and negotiation with the transition of time. Fischer & el Sani are interested in exploring the historic traces of urban landmarks, monuments and events that embody such a transition. Several places that were once hallmarks, centers of political culture, avant-garde art, and social developments, have become more or less temporally blind spots in contemporary society. They bring them back to today's consciousness in their altered, mystified phases: not utopian anymore, not obsolete, but rather not yet redefined.Nina Fischer / Maroan el Sani are filmmakers and visual artists. They have been working together in Berlin since 1993. From 2007 until 2010 they have been Associate Professors for Film and Media Art at Sapporo City University, Japan. International exhibitions they have participated in include Gwangju Biennale 1995, 2002, 2008, Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, 1999, Manifesta 4, Frankfurt 2002, Sydney Biennale 2002, 10th Istanbul Biennial 2007, 5th Media City Seoul Biennale, 2012 and solo exhibitions at Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, 1999, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, 2005, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, 2007, Kunsthaus Glarus, 2009, Cobra Museum, Amstelveen, Museum of Contemporary Art Hiroshima, 2010, Austin Museum of Art - Arthouse, Austin and Berlinische Galerie - Museum of Modern Art, Berlin, 2012.