Plantinga, b. 1956, Berlin, to an Estonian mother and unknown father, thought to have been a journalist. Given her first camera, a Leica, at the age of 17 while was working as an au pair in Amsterdam. She now has 100 cameras and lenses beyond count. Timebound relation to technology is a consistent preoccupation in her work. In 2003–4 collaborated with the Polish community in Pittsburgh on The Role of Expressiveness in Human–Robot Interaction, in which robots programmed to recite Stanisław Lem’s Bajki robotów, Robot Tales, were used to prevent language-loss in young third-generation immigrants. More recent works include Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 2005-9, and Sexual Codes of the Europeans 2010. Plantinga is now working on The Map of Exactitude, 2011. For this work, a series of cameras, both pinhole and slit cameras were constructed, the scale and form of the cameras dictated by the architecture of the space on a 1:1 scale. The apertures of the camera were dictated by the markings and traces left on the space by its history.
Commission for ALIAS / KRAKÓW PHOTOMONTH 2011, Curated by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
www.photomonth.com / www.choppedliver.info
