Neniu Loko

on-going since 2013

Analog photography

For her Neniu Loko photo series, Elianna Renner uses a defective analog camera to photograph locations. The images are hence typically blurred—yet cityscapes can be made out nonetheless in the atmospheric haze. Action in them is reduced to a minimum: it can be seen that something or other is taking place in an urban context but exactly what remains obscure. Likewise the locations themselves, which are deserted for the most part, fail to convey any singular details that would permit their closer identification; and each serves thus simply as an emblem of human settlement: it could be any city on the planet and is therefore imbued with a sense of timelessness that is universal as well as deeply human. The series’ title—the Esperanto term for “No Place”—highlights this universality. In truth, the various settings are real locations that the artist has visited in person: highly individual cities in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Near East, steeped each in a unique, rich cultural history and examined here accordingly in light of that. But Renner also has an eye for the factors common to them all, and this critical view of the modern world shines through. It is an attempt to grasp those prototypical aspects of urban life that persist beyond the sphere of local influence.