Ger Ger alias Gerhard Schwoiger

Short Biography

Ger Ger, media artist, born in Vienna/A 1981, currently lives and works in Vienna/A and Berlin/D. He feels drawn to art and digital media early on in life, receives his first honors and awards aged fourteen. M.A. in Digital Arts and Visual Media Design. Study with Karel Dudesek, Peter Weibel and Tom Fürstner at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Scholarship in Visual Communication with Joachim Sauter at the University of Arts in Berlin. His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at Ars Electronica (Linz), Electrohype (Malmo), Open (London), FILE (Sao Paulo/Curitiba City), Kunsthalle (Vienna), LA Freewaves (Los Angeles), Rencontres Internationales (Paris), and many other venues. His awards include the Prix Ars Electronica, CYNETart, Rheingold Award and Prix MultimediaArt.

Artist's Statement

I deliberately work in a wide range of media and techniques. Time and again my projects foray into the realms of the hitherto untouched. Pieces are alternately reflexive, poetic, critical or visionary.

My work is site-specific and supra-regional/inter-national/networked at the same time. Places/people/religions/cultures/travel take significance as my principal sources of inspiration.
Passers-by or visitors are integrated, alienation takes place, and the everyday life is reconnected in new patterns. Again and again my pieces hold up a distorting mirror to reality. The line between reality and fiction frequently blurs.

It is important to me to constantly cross disciplines and mediums to convey impressions, emotions, and statements conclusively. My choice for a certain medium is often driven by the effort in obtaining an expression that is powerful and aesthetic at all levels. Therefore, the coherence of the implemented media and techniques with the content is of particular importance. All pieces aim to leave plenty of scope for personal interpretation.
I think my constant ambition to work with the widest possible spectrum of techniques and technologies has much to do with my inner need to do things differently. I always avoid going the same road again and again. I guess, it's also challenges I'm chasing after.

It's the attempt to constantly find new viewing angles, to think far outside the box, to dive into layers of abstraction where the obviousness and importance of things follow their own rules and let you reveal something new. The urge on expressing all those emotions and sharing my experiences that pushes me forward.

While working with so many new technologies, at the same time I still believe in expression and personality in digital art through the development of projects from beginning to end with my own power. My thoughts and emotions can thus be transported more directly and stylistically than would be possible by commissioning the execution of ideas to third parties.
I founded my own online working platforms, workflows and techniques for a more efficient and self-documenting creative production in order to realize even large, cross-media projects. Collaboration, however, occurs when necessary or refreshing for the content and expression at hand. Thus, these platforms also enable projects with many participants all over the world.

I highly value the cycle of individual study, and dealing openly with my own ideas, concepts, and experiences after all. Since, an artist or creative is not only acting as f.i. an inventor, visionary, or engineer but furthermore put her whole person and talent into the realization, the whole work will distinguish from others anyway - with its strengths and weaknesses.
I think the most important factor in creative work which often decides over success can be you – your own personal touch, your one-of-a-kind working method, your esthetics. Sometimes it's all about you, sometimes it's all about ideas and timing, sometimes it's all about esthetics and how everything is put together or the choice of the right medium. However, the process of making is quite often substantial and very apparent.