In 2016, when Sascha Pohle was an artist in residence in Beijing, he opened a Karl Blossfeldt Taschen edition from 2014, where he noticed a little handwritten personal dedication which said: “For Max from Shuyu”. While an artist residency program could be regarded as a sort of gift itself, with certain underlying dependencies and expectation of reciprocity, it also bears an economy in which artists choose to temporarily reside in different cities or countries. During such residencies new friends, professional connections can be made that continue further in the future, where artists return or even want to settle.

The video consists of documentation material from a gift performance. Before entering a certain room, the audience was presented with an opening speech reciting a fragment from Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. This passage reveals the twisted notion of a so-called “Indian giver” based on the anecdote of an encounter between an Englishman and a Native American tribe in which a pipe of peace offered as a gift was instead abused as a capital and museum artifact. After the opening speech, visitors were invited inside to receive a gift from the artist. More than 80 hand fans from his personal collection were shown on a long table, from which the video “After the Gift – Blossfeldt’s Fan” was made. Each hand fan was personally given to a visitor who became co-owner of a work of art and a visual part of the exhibition during the opening. As protagonists, they held the gifts in their hands or simply fanned cold air on a hot summer’s day.

*2021, video 2’55”, B&W, English with English captions

Excerpt of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, New York, [Vintage Books], 1983, CHAPTER ONE, The Motion, Page 3 – 4

Narrator: Elliot Woods

Courtesy of the artist