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Der Parasit / The Parasite (signed)

by Sophie Tiller

Photographs: Sophie Tiller

Text: Katharina Manojlovic

Publisher: Album Verlag

240 pages

Year: 2018

ISBN: 978-3-85164-199-8

Price: 59 €

Comments: Hardcover, Edition of 300, 20 x 24 cm

The book DER PARASIT/THE PARASITE shows works of the artist Sophie Tiller that were produced during a long-term project.

"The basic idea is to create something real out of our knowledge again, to morph its abstractness into a physical appearance.

My series of works called "The Parasite" is an ongoing project that started in 2008.

It consists of various natural history books, in which I drill wholes, fill them with earth and insert monks cress. This process of seeding a lifeform into books is planned beforehand, but over time plants - "parasites" - are settling in the books naturally, eliminating the cress step by step. Over time, the books also attract worms, snails and various microbes that are settling in their new found habitat, creating what I then documents in my photographies.

Each of the images of my "Parasites" show one transitional stage of the books with no documentary background, only presenting one state of becoming and decaying. The books come to life, create their own appearances and interact with life organisms, through parasites invading the host, soaking up its content and changing the materiality and the function of a book. This stands for the chaos and irrationality of life, showing its illogicality and randomness. It works as a metaphor for the human body and the knowledge we acquired over the past centuries that was transmitted through books and remains. They, and our corpses respectively, will decay eventually, but new seeds will always be spreading, creating the basis of life and knowledge anew.

We can see a stilllife of life, one phase in the ongoing process of growing and decaying, which inevitably hints at spring and fall. Last but not least, plan versus coincidence, which is the contradiction. I leave the outcome solely to nature and chance, which both will eventually find a form that I cannot influence."

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