For more than twenty years Peter Piller (born 1968 in Germany) has been making peripheral excursions, or Peripheriewanderungen (Periphery Walks) in various European cities. In Hamburg, the Ruhr region, Bonn, Graz, and Barcelona he has explored small sections of areas marking the outer borders of urban settlement in cities and regions of varying size. In carrying out these walks Piller follows things that catch his eye as well as cues from his memory, ending his excursion once he feels unable to take in anything more. When something particularly interests him on one of his explorations, he departs from his determined routes, wanders around through the area, or even simply waits for a key moment. Archives of photographs result, which he subsequently expands upon in his studio with his Erinnerungszeichnungen (Drawings from Memory).
In these mental maps the medium of drawing supplements that of photography and vice versa.
Peter Piller values the “advantages of a lack of intention.” In his archives, he accordingly collects amateurish press photos of unspectacular situations with regional significance. He shows aerial views of German residential areas or redesigns the cover of the military magazine Armeerundschau from the days of the German Democratic Republic. These are documents of a petty-bourgeois society which, seen with Piller’s eyes, turns out to have grotesque characteristics. Recently he has turned his attention to black-and-white pictorial documentation of cave drawings, the oldest traces of human civilization.
The Weserburg Museum of Modern Art has a unique collection of artists’ publications and written material in Europe. The Centre for Artists’ Publications functions as an archive, research institute, and exhibition venue in equal measure. The archive and collection holdings form the basis of exemplary exhibitions and renowned scholarly research.
