Horst Ademeit

1937 - 2010

„It’s only a question of time, before I’ll have you caught in the act!“Horst Ademeit

In the last 40 years of his life, Horst Ademeit dedicated himself to the documentation of the noxious influence of cold rays on himself and his environment. With the help of Polaroid photography as well as analog and digital photography, he secured the material of his daily observations, also documenting descriptively the smells, sounds, and the atmosphere of his observations on the white frame of the Polaroids. These observation photos document the efficacy of this threatening power in his immediate life environment, showing construction site work, abandoned bicycles, accumulations of garbage, and oil slicks. He also recorded regularly the behavior of spiders and fruit flies, painstakingly retaining the date of each observation, often over months, on the Polaroids. Aside from the most current headlines of BILD-Zeitung, Ademeit arranged measuring instruments, letters, and food on the daily images. Each of the several thousands of daily images is numbered, dated, and inscribed with his miniature handwriting that is hardly readable.

In order to be able to calculate the burden inflicted by cold rays more precisely, Ademeit also employed an arsenal of measuring instruments (Geiger counters, thermometers, lightmeters, etc.) and developed his own methods for measuring temperature fluctuations [and possible othercauses] of a fissure in his tabletop. Detailed notes can also be found in his numerous, densely inscribed leporellos. Apart from the photographic and written references, Ademeit also turned on a lathe hundreds of little spheres from various woods, which, placed on his body, served him in warding off the cold rays. Since 1999, Horst Ademeit also worked with digital cameras noting his observations on separate text sheets.

Ademeit developed a complex recording system for the documentation of cold rays, in which repetitive motifs and descriptions form firm relationships. The necessity of recording and the conclusive logic of his system required a compulsory routine that determined the structure of his entire day.

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