Everyday heroes
Fanni Futterknecht
2019
Artist Statement
Everyday Heroes reflects the role of virtuality, as an “ideal“ reality and a growing substitute for everyday life as perceived within Japanese Society. By combining daily sceneries, routines, and functions put into relation to a fictional imaginary space of mind inspired by Anime narratives, Fanni Futterknecht presents her last project produced during her stay in Tokyo. Futterknecht's interest is in exploring an alternative interior world where people can feel closer and more secure than reality, especially within contemporary Japanese culture and society. She has taken her interests in these representations of anime and manga, distributed as they are throughout Japan, rather than the art forms in themselves. After researching and exploring the world of the “Otaku“ scene around the representations, the artist investigates how people inhabit different imaginations in everyday life while performing their social norms. Those worlds imagined by the artist are not merely projected to everyday life in Japan, but intimate a wider significance, encompassing the myriad of visual images in advertisements, propaganda and rebellion movements around the world.
I find the video "Everyday heroes" fits very well in the proposed concept. It is a work that explores the relation to a fictional imaginary space of mind and how people inhabit different imaginations in everyday life in Japan. It is also about my very own personal fantasy of how I see everyday life in Japan as well as what I project onto it. Therefore it also occupies a space that is between reality and dream/fantasy.
Artist Bio
Born in Vienna, Fanni Futterknecht has been studying free media, contextual painting and video at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam, Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She participated at CNDC in Angers in France researching performance, space and the body. Fanni Futterknecht creates performances, installations and works with video. Fanni Futterknecht's works adopt a position that spans media, ranging between video, performance, and installation. In her works she reflects on sociological and social questions, converting them into poetic interpretations. Besides numerous scholarships, she has been shown her work in Vienna, Paris, Tokyo, Melbourne, Shanghai, Cairo amongst others.