slowscan tele visions

Wolfgang Staehle

Wolfgang Staehle is an early pioneer of net.art in the United States, known for his video streaming of the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001.

Education

Wolfgang Staehle was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1950 and gained his first set of studies at the Freie Kunstschule in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1976, he moved to New York and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts.

Life and Work

After getting his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, he worked as a video artist, and in 1991, he founded The Thing The Thing was an Internet forum for new media art. It started out as an independent media project that began as a bulletin board system (BBS) that later became an online forum for artists and cultural theorists to exchange ideas. By the late 1990s, The Thing grew into a successful online community and began hosting artists' websites. It also includes a mailing list and was the first Website devoted to net.art, bbs.thing.net.

In 1996, he started his series of live online video streams. His first series is called Empire 24/7 where he documented the Empire State Building in New York City. He documented it by setting up a digital still camera at The Thing’s office located in New York’s West Chelsea neighborhood. Every four seconds, the camera took a picture of the building and the images were sent and projected in a gallery at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany. This project was a reference to Andy Warhol’s 1964 film called the Empire. Empire (1964 film) was a silent, eight-hour-long black and white film in which the camera focus on the Empire State Building from dusk until dawn. Staehle have continue working on his series of live online video streams of other buildings, landscapes and cityscapes such as the Fernsehturm in Berlin, the Comburg Monastery in Germany, and a Yanomami village in the Brazilian rainforest. Staehle currently serves as the Executive Director of The Thing and is represented by the Postmasters Gallery in New York.

Notable projects

Empire 24/7 (1999-2004)
Untitled (2001)
Fernsehturm (2001-Present)
Comburg (2001-Present)
Yano a (2002)

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

1987

Daniel Newburg Gallery, New York

1988

T'Venster Museum, Rotterdam, Netherlands
"Requiem," The New Museum, New York
Daniel Newburg Gallery, New York

1989

Galerie Sylvana Lorenz, Paris, France
The Kitchen, New York
Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

1990

Marimura Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Galleri Wallner, Malmo, Sweden
Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf, Hamburg, Germany
Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany
Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany
Daniel Buchholz Gallery, Cologne, Germany
Koury Wingate Gallery, New York

1991

Massimo De Carlo Gallery, Milan, Italy

1993

"Point de Mire," Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

1996

"Installations Video," Art & Public, Geneva, Switzerland

2000

Kunstverein Schwaebisch Hall, Germany

2001

Postmasters Gallery, New York City

2004

Postmasters Gallery, New York City

Group Exhibitions

2001

"Tele[Visions]"
"Media Connection"

2002

"Unknown Quantity," Foundation Cartier pour L'Art Contemporian, Paris
"Monitor 2," Gagosian Chelsea, New York
"EMPIRE/STATE," Whitney Museum of American Art, Independent Study Program Exhibition at the Art Gallery of The Graduate Center, The City University of New York
"Outside the Box, " University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, Florida
"Transmediale.02

2003