235 Firmendach | Mohné & Kopp

REMOTEWORDS.32 marks the 32nd installment of the long-term art project REMOTEWORDS by Achim Mohné and Uta Kopp. REMOTEWORDS writes short messages in large letters on rooftops to disseminate them via navigation and satellite systems such as Google Earth, which are thus “hacked” and used for artistic purposes. Individual messages are always developed for the various REMOTEWORDS locations—for example, the Berlin University of the Arts, the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn, or the H3K, House of Electronic Arts in Basel.

The words now displayed on the roof of 235 MEDIA in Cologne were selected by Cologne-based artist Marcel Odenbach and are taken from a 1952 poem by Ingeborg Bachmann. For the artists, the text serves here and now to put media images into perspective and calls for a constant questioning of so-called “photographic authenticity.”

On the occasion of the rooftop’s opening on July 8, 2016, a radio-controlled CCTV drone from the affiliated film production company TIMESCOPE films flew over the roof of 235 MEDIA’s showroom and workshops, to transmit aerial footage in 4K quality and reveal the news.