Year:
2001 – ongoing

short.cuts is a continuous series of relief-like miniatures, each created within a maximum time of 60 minutes. The original purpose of data protection patterns is to camouflage private information. Here, data protection patterns on the interiors of envelopes, and color-printed enlarged sections of them, are combined with various materials. Spatial layers emerge from a sprawling jumble of letters, numbers, and graphic elements. From 2020 to 2022, during the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately 100 new works were created in loose succession, reigniting a series initially started in 2001.

As a kind of diary, these collages experimentally explore the layers of negotiation within envelope data protection patterns: between inside and outside, legibility and concealment, discretion
and exposure. Like the paper envelopes, a building envelope is not just a functional layer—it serves a climatic, technological, and aesthetic purpose, but also a precise strategy responding to questions of the transparency, delimitation, porosity, and permeability of borders. This layer is experimentally spatialized with the short.cuts and defined as a location that transforms this ambivalence and its communicative aspect into an actual architectural experience.

Partner in Charge:
Jürgen Mayer H.

Photographer:
Ludger Paffrath