Hermes Insensed

60 glass-framed photos, including 15 hand­written English texts (Tanya Ury),
15 hand­written German texts (trans­la­tion: Alix Brand & Tanya Ury)

Edition of seven: No.1 — No. 60: 42 x 63 cm, No. 61: 50 x 75 cm (mounted and sealed under plexiglass)
(Edition of seven: No.1 — No. 60: 84 x 126 cm, No.61: 100 x 150 cm)

Cata­logue, Korridor Verlag 2001 (D) ISBN 3−9802189−4−5

An audio CD for a tape-slide instal­la­tion version of Hermes Insensed (2 x 80 slides) was produced in 2003: sound tech­ni­cian Lale Konuk.

In several of her works Tanya Ury has adopted the name of Hermè or Herme (her & me):

Hermeneu­rotic — a collec­tion of works:

Double Portraits – a collec­tion of works:

Photographs No. 1 – 60 may be divided into groups of 4. Each of these 15 subjects consists of two colour photographs and two corre­sponding photos of hand-written letters. 28 people from nearly a dozen coun­tries were photographed in Zurich, Berlin, Stuttgart and Cologne. The depicted theme is an old-world ritual of formal inti­macy: the hand-kiss. Hermes Insensed is nostalgia in a digital age. Inter­spersed with nursery rhymes and verses by the artist, the one-sided discourse reads on different levels: the socio-polit­ical, the private and personal. One pseu­donym ​‘Her/​me’, addresses another ​‘Jacob’ (or ​‘Jack’); but these titles, are they stereo­types, myth­ical figures, or just nick­names of regular people? Are the photos and texts docu­men­tary or fiction? The line isn’t clear but between the lines, is clearly a utopian longing for peace, an appeal for grace.

“Her/​me asked Doron about his mention of Jose­phus Flavius in connec­tion with the histo­rian Rabbi Murmel­stein who, as one of Vienna’s Judenrat, was required to organise the trans­ports out of Vienna and the running of the concen­tra­tion camp There­sien­stadt. Doron explained that Murmel­stein, philoso­pher and theolo­gian, had before the war, published an anthology, which included texts by Jose­phus Flavius, the one-time commander of the Jewish uprising in Galilee against the Roman Empire 66 – 73 AD.”

Extract from the 12th story

Tanya Ury

Errata: Cata­logue and in the text images (German only)

Flavius was the one-time commander of the Jewish uprising in Galilee against the Roman Empire 66 – 73 AD. (German version says BC).

Hungarian trans­la­tion Kristóf Szabó

Press

The universal language in the cere­mo­nial, simple hand-kiss that Tanya Ury portrays in her humorous colour photos is multi-layered. Unlike her six colleagues in the exhi­bi­tion ​„Ambivalenzen“ (Frauen Museum Bonn & Galerie Münster­land Emsdetten (D) 2002), Ury, who was born in London and now lives in Cologne, concerns herself inten­sively with the people around her. The exten­sive Photo and Text series (Hermes Insensed) points to a close inter­weaving of her personal and artistic life: she asked friends and colleagues to greet one another with a ​“hand kiss”, to court and to recon­cile them­selves with one another; then she photographed them. It was up to those invited how they repre­sented them­selves – whether it was with a sense of irony, frank­ness, sarcasm or masochism. Tanya Ury has addi­tion­ally written and presented ficti­tious letters, or diary notes that throw a wholly new and inde­pen­dent light on the photographed situations.

Schayan (trans­la­tion from German Tanya Ury) ​‘Deutsch­land’ Oct-Nov 2002


Presen­ta­tion

2000 Exhi­bi­tion, Hotel Seehof, Zurich (CH)

2002 Slide reading only, Postkolo­niale Kritik NGBK Berlin (D)

2002 Slide reading only, Migra­tion, Arbeit und Geschlecht congress, Berlin (D)

2002 Exhi­bi­tion: Ambiva­lence, Frauen­mu­seum (Women’s Museum), Bonn (D)

2002 Slide Instal­la­tion only, Ambiva­lence, Galerie Münster­land, Emsdetten (D)

2002 Exhi­bi­tion with reading at opening, 68 Elf Galerie Köln (D)

2003 Slide reading only, Schatten der Vergan­gen­heit: Erin­nerung als Lähmung oder Chance? (Shadows of the Past: Memo­ries of the Holo­caust: Inhi­bi­tion or Oppor­tu­nity?) Haus der Geschichte, Bonn (D)

Publi­ca­tions & Press

Schayan, Deutsch­land-Maga­zine Oct-Nov 2002 (English trans­la­tion Tanya Ury)

The universal language in the cere­mony of a simple hand-kiss that Tanya Ury portrays in her humorous colour photos is multi-layered. Ury who was born in London and now lives in Cologne, (…) concerns herself with the people around her inten­sively. Her exten­sive Photo and Text series (Hermes Insensed) shown in the exhi­bi­tion ​“Ambivalenzen” (Frauen Museum Bonn & Galerie Münster­land Emsdetten 2002) points to a close inter­weaving of her personal and artistic life: she asked friends and colleagues to greet one another with a ​“hand-kiss”, to pay court to and to recon­cile them­selves with one another; then she photographed them. It was up to those invited how they presented them­selves — whether it was with a sense of irony, frank­ness, sarcasm or masochism. Tanya Ury has addi­tion­ally written and presented ficti­tious letters, or diary notes that throw a wholly new and inde­pen­dent light on the photographed situations.

Artist’s Writ­ings & Publications

2001 (6−7) Announce­ment of the exhi­bi­tion ​“Insensed” Hotel Seehof, Zurich (CH) with image no. 1 from Ô d’Oriane in Kunst­forum Inter­na­tional, edition 155 (D)

2008 () Ô d’Oriane no. 7. as book cover for ​“Im Schatten des Verstehens”(In the Shadow of Under­standing), Dr. Petra Renneke, Verlag Könighausen und Neumann (D)

2008 () Ô d’Oriane no. ?. as book cover for ​“Poesie und Wissen” (Poetry and Knowl­edge), Dr. Petra Renneke, Fink-Verlag Munich (D)

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