»We should accept that images do not depict reality but construct it.«

Interview with Viktoria Binschtok

Viktoria Binschtok in front of Statue Feet / Green Gloves, 2021, Photo: Galerie Klemm’s, 2026

The works of Viktoria Binschtok were first encountered by Rainer and Annette Stadler in 2017 at the exhibition Turm der blauen Pferde at the Graphische Sammlung München. For this exhibition, the artist developed an edition which also marked the first acquisition for the collection. Through her gallery, her work continued to unfold, and a personal meeting soon followed. Several studio visits led to a close and friendly exchange, from which an ongoing engagement with her work developed.

Viktoria Binschtok’s works explore the circulation and logic of digital images and translate these into photographic and installative works. They open up a perspective on a present in which images are omnipresent and move between physical and virtual space.

In the interview, Viktoria Binschtok speaks about formative experiences, digital image cultures, and her artistic strategies for making these visible through the medium of photography.

You once said that when you moved from Moscow to Minden as a child, you connected to your new home through images because you didn’t speak German at first. Would you say this experience shaped your artistic work?

Yes, I think so. Through emigration, everything was suddenly different. I not only had to learn a new language; due to the system change in the new country, I didn’t understand the codes. Completely different rules, ideas, and goals applied. Since I no longer understood anything, the many colourful images became my mediators of the new reality. Whether advertising clips or Spiegel reports; I tried to meaningfully categorise everything in order to be part of the new world. New visual worlds are always an important source of inspiration for my artistic work.

Looking back: in which work did this early experience of images materialise for the first time?

I experienced the rapid change that became noticeable in the 1990s through digitalisation and globalisation. In 1995, I began studying at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, started using the internet, and observed how the use of the medium of photography expanded in the digital space.
New image genres emerged, such as private snapshots of used everyday objects on eBay. Overwhelmed by this pool of images, I initially began to collect images randomly and categorise them. Eventually, I chose the term ‘globe’, as I saw an interesting connection between increasing globalization and the simultaneous dematerialization of things. Objects such as globes suddenly became obsolete, as did multi-volume encyclopaedias. The knowledge of humanity was now invisibly bundled on the web. I processed this turning point in my diploma project Globes in 2002.

Bintschok-Viktoria_Globen, Galerie fuer zeitgen. Kunst (Studio) Leipzig, 2002_web.jpg

Viktoria Bintschok, Globen, Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst (Studio) Leipzig, 2002

In your series Cluster and Networked Images, you create constellations using your own images and those generated algorithmically. What criteria do you use to select them, and when do you feel a constellation works well?

I approached image pairings very intuitively, without any set rules. The image search algorithm provided me with vast amounts of material, and I worked with it. It was important to me to create visually compelling connections that have a stronger impact than their context-free, content-based relationship. I wanted to visualise digital interconnectedness using the means of photography. The various image constellations represent interfaces within this networked structure. In other words, links that lead us from one piece of information to the next. They represent just one possible connection amongst an infinite number of combinations.

Furthermore, I wanted to depict the simultaneity of information that appears very uniformly on our screens. Whether it is a staged breakfast photo or a lifeless body in a war zone: all images on the internet reach us on the same rectangular surface.
I explore this parallelism of banality and catastrophe, calculation and coincidence in these works. It was also important to me to depict a broad spectrum and not to highlight any particular theme.

You transfer these constellations as photographs into physical installations. Is this shift into the material a deliberate response to the speed of the digital image flow?

As an artist who works and exhibits in physical space, it is natural to me to materialise my ideas. Many of the images I find online exist only on the internet and have no further purpose outside of it. Only by removing these fleeting images from circulation can I establish thematic connections between them.
In my arrangements, they enter into a visual relationship with my own images. These symbioses connect both worlds. They represent online and offline origins equally. Both are part of our reality, which is why I treat both visual worlds equally in my presentations.

Viktoria Bintschok, works from the series Networked Images, 2019-2021, Courtesy the artist & Klemm's, Berlin

What does a typical working day look like for you?

It mainly takes place at the computer. Almost all activities such as research, finding images, and even meetings are tied to a device. I have three workstations that are all connected via my cloud: in the studio, at home in bed, and in the kitchen. This allows me to move between locations at any time. Sometimes I allow myself spontaneous breaks, such as visiting exhibitions. Looking at art can be very inspiring. So can going for a walk. That’s when I reflect: on the next image, a better title, a text, and so on. Pondering is certainly also a typical part of my work; you just cannot always tell, because I may be doing something completely different at the same time.
And then there are very busy phases such as production, openings, travelling, setting up exhibitions, a teaching assignment or workshops … sometimes everything comes together, which is particularly challenging and beautiful at the same time.

Do you spend more time searching for and organising images, or actually taking the photos?

I spend most of my time researching and developing a concept. I experiment a lot before I decide on something. Photographing itself often happens very quickly, as I only take the camera out when I already know exactly how the image should look.

Are there times when you feel overwhelmed by the constant flood of images?

It’s not so much the sheer volume of images that overwhelms me as the algorithm’s preselection. This personalised mix of public, private, commercial and machine-generated images, all of which more or less immediately interest me, makes it difficult for me to simply switch off. Even self-imposed screen time doesn’t help.

In your series Digital Semiotics, you describe the journey from symbol to code, from a seemingly banal pictorial sign to an encrypted meaning. What interests you about this circulation and shifting of signs?

I am interested in communication through signs on many levels. It operates asymmetrically in relation to our interactions in the analogue world and follows no discernible logic. There are countless forms of slang in the digital sphere. It can connect people, but also divide them.
The shift from a sign to a code is not always obvious; there are no clear rules and many exceptions. A visual similarity between symbol and code may exist, but does not have to. Sometimes it is merely the phonetic sound that charges a symbol with new meaning, such as the Chinese equivalent of ‘MeToo’. It is composed of the pictograms for ‘rice’ and ‘bunny’, which is pronounced ‘mi tu’ in Chinese. This combination of signs has enabled women in China to circumvent the censorship of the #MeToo hashtag and to connect with one another. I find the subversive use of signs particularly fascinating, which is why I primarily reflect on such codes in my work.
But even very familiar symbols such as the skull or the praying hands take on a completely different meaning in the digital sphere. These shifts in meaning between cultures, generations, and also between online and offline spaces are extremely fascinating to me.

Viktoria Binschtok, Installation views Digital Semiotics, Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2025 / Dollar Skull, Installation view Digital Semiotics, Klemm’s Berlin, 2026

Through your photographs, you transfer these codes into physical space. Do you want to manifest their meanings in this way, or expand them by another layer?

Almost all of my works are photographic appropriations. I therefore refer to existing image worlds or, in this case, image signs. Here I address a specific digital phenomenon using the means of photography. The transfer into physical space is important here in order to gain some distance and recognise the relevance. Many societal changes take place through online communication. It is essential for me to address this development offline. At the same time, I also archive certain fast-moving processes, such as forms of online slang, which is constantly changing. Perhaps my work will one day be used for forensic analyses of early online communication.

At the moment, the very way images are created is undergoing a fundamental transformation. This is because AI opens up entirely new possibilities for image production. What role does this play in your work?

I am very interested in new technologies; sometimes I use them as artistic tools, as in my series Typewriter Photographs (2022/23). Here, I used various image recognition apps to capture how AI ‘sees’ our current global situation based on selected images from sport, politics, and also private snapshots. I transferred the AI’s results – that is, the objects it recognised – onto paper using an old typewriter. The terms are positioned in specific arrangements that refer to their position in the original image.
In my photographs, I make both worlds equally visible: machine perception and the machine apparatus – both are interdependent to a certain extent.

Viktoria Binschtok, Mona L., 28, 2023

Against the backdrop of these developments, the significance of everyday images, and the new possibilities offered by AI: how will we look at today’s image culture in twenty years, and will images still be able to provide a form of orientation?

A great deal can happen in twenty years; I don’t have the imagination to foresee it all. If we look at the development of the past twenty years, the combination of smartphones and social media has created an entirely new image culture, which also has far-reaching political consequences. We now live in a platform-based capitalism in which a handful of tech oligarchs determine the rules; this development is alarming.
Perhaps in the future people will no longer speculate about the truthfulness of images. To some extent, this shift in thinking is already taking place, as seen in current discussions about deepfakes and false identities. We should accept that images do not depict reality but construct it.

Interview by Sophie Azzilonna

April 2026