Image left to right: Dr Tom Ryan, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Dr Leonhard Emmerling

Tuesday 28 February, 6pm, WS222: Dr. Tom Ryan, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Waikato University in conversation with Clemens von Wedemeyer.

Clemens von Wedemeyer's The Fourth Wall, an ambitious film-based installation, revolves around first encounters such as those between anthropologist and subject, actor and audience. Commissioned by the Barbican, London in 2009, the starting point of the work is the Philippine group called the Tasaday who were allegedly first ‘discovered’ in the rain forests of Mindanao by a journalist and anthropologists in 1971.

Clemens von Wedemeyer was born in 1974 in Göttingen, Germany. He lives and works in Berlin. He has exhibited at the Moscow Biennial in 2005 and at the Berlin Biennial in 2006. Solo exhibitions include Kölnischer Kunstverein and MoMA PS1, New York, in 2006, the Barbican Art Centre London in 2009 and the Frankfurter Kunstverein in 2011. In 2012 von Wedemeyer will be showing work in documenta13, and The Fourth Wall will be exhibited in the Paris Triennale.

Dr Tom Ryan is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Waikato University. His research interests include Pacific anthropology, social theory, the history of anthropology, and industrial anthropology.

The Fourth Wall was commissioned by the Barbican Art Gallery, London in 2009. The exhibition is brought to New Zealand by ST PAUL St Gallery and Dunedin Public Art Gallery in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut with funding from the German Federal Foreign Office and support from Panasonic. The exhibition has been facilitated by former ST PAUL St Gallery director Leonhard Emmerling.