Through the Looking-Glass
‘How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they’d give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn’t good to drink— But oh, Kitty!…. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking- glass House! I’m sure it’s got, oh! such beautiful things in it."
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Nice view!
This site specific installation shows the view out of the artist’s studio in Gausstrasse Hamburg. The old factory windows have been covered with clear display film, on which the previously photographed view out of the window was printed. The printed film shows what the world was like at a certain point in time. At the beginning of the installation the viewer was able to match the printed version of the view with the real view out of the window. One had to position oneself exactly in the place where the photograph was taken, finding the right spot, the right distance, angle and height to make the real and the translucent photographed view match. After a while the real view was changing....
Microfiche 1
The microfiche contains a selection of 260 super 8-film stills of my own personal collection of films. The stills are put together randomly on the fiche. The microfiche viewer allows one to view the frames at screen filling size. One can negotiate the images at will. There is series of interchangeable grids containing paths that the viewer may choose to follow as a guide through the images. Following the paths gives the opportunity to view the whole fiche in "sequences". The microfiche viewer has a sculptural presence. It is crucial for the reading of the work since it comprises dated technology used in libraries and archives. Using the microfiche viewer to negotiate between the stills refers to archiving of personal history, in terms of memory and to actual archiving of family films, photographs etc. The way one negotiates between the images refers to mental mapping of memory and to the way mental mapping is influenced by photographic evidence.
THREE SHORT STORIES
Microfiche sound installation
The source of the images and the sound are three short stories. The 3 films were shot in a little fishing village in Hamburg by the river Elbe. I invented a system for film scores that allowed me to construct in this case three stories all happening at exactly the same time, in seemingly different locations overlapping at certain points. The system provides a set of locations in which the scenes take place. The story line of each of the films travels through the same number of locations for the same amount of time. Due to the system some of the locations of “story 1” appear in “story 2” at some point and in “story 3” at another. The system incorporates the possibility of the story line travelling back in time. One and the same location can be in the present in one story and in the past of another (flashback times mixed with present time). These recurring locations are filmed and sound recorded from different perspectives and out of different viewpoints...
Zeitlos
The installation shows a series of six A3 photographs hand printed from optical enlarged super 8 stills. A woman is sitting in a lounge dangling her legs. A porcelain dog sits opposite. On a shelf behind the dog is an aquarium with an ever-spinning red wheel; inside, air bubbles keep rising in the tank. Nothing happens except that the legs move and the wheel spins. The woman seems to be waiting but more in a sense of resting. Things go on but time has overcome itself. A perpetuum mobile, waiting without a purpose kept in a time capsule. Time has become a relentlessly cracked record.
Kjesty
This installation uses familiar components, which through recognition may draw the viewer into the world of childhood memories: bedtime singing and stories, dreams and nightmares: things we wished for and things we were scared of: the dreams we once had that have been forgotten and the dreams that stay with us.
24/24
