Geteilte Zeit: Fragen und Antworten
Shared and/or Divided Times: Questions and
Answers
Installed Ideas - Introduction
Translation: Angiola Bonanni / Gisela Weimann
Since 1976 I have made more than fifty installations as works in situ, in concrete spaces of wide dimensions, the majority of which had an intermedia character. They always start off from a concept that is developed in the space itself by taking it as support for an extensive, but usually subtle, mise en scène. In this way, my installations have an intense life inclusive of elements that integrate the spectators and allow them to make an inner and outer journey while always being surrounded by precisely planned interventions, that lead them necessarily deeper into the proposed idea. Of course, at any time there is the option for the spectators to leave the place and, consequently, give up all reflection about the piece.
On many occasions, once the development of the inherent concept of a work is concluded, it has inspired me to make other complementary works to the first one, considering that the idea could be developed in other forms as well. Using this method of looking at it from another angle it could become richer than the original concept it had started from. Sometimes and due to the requirements of the action, performances have arisen in this way that extended the concept of the work. Others, for example, may have required a strictly acoustic development of the concept and have found the deepening of the idea in the field of radio art. Again others have needed the visual medium as moving image to go deeper into the concept through realities immersed in the immaterial electronic space. So this is how my works have been growing in independent ramifications, becoming richer with each variation on the basis of the experience of the original concept.
From this line of thought grew the necessity of making the project I am presenting here today. It extends the reflections of the following ten installations that I have selected and that are presented together, one after the other, in this interactive DVD.
INSTALLED IDEAS - CONTENT
Under this generic title enunciated as a mental action of "installing ideas", I arranged a group of ten digital video-art works that stem from concepts and from images of ten selected InterMedia installations of mine made between 1994 and 2006.
Among the ideas that come together in these realized works of mine - originating from their corresponding installations - we will mention the concept of interference, developed as an active individual attitude in the widest sense. Starting from this concept I had made the videos Through interferences, Passage of interferences and Walking through interferences beyond broken utopias, the last one being connected as well to the utopia concept.
There is another work, Golden Stars, which reflections on the political power of European institutions and on some realities that happen under it, like the lack of elementary human rights, situations of inequality and poverty of specific sectors of the population, lack of solidarity with populations of the third world...
Another work, Traveller of imagined paradises centers in the discourse of the fact of emigration, the search for chimeras that disappeared on arrival, the uprooting, the lack of communication, the humiliation...
The dark side of the mirror goes deeper into the limits of justice from the spaces of stabulation of the jails; the inner reality and the reflection of the outside...
The work Garden of signs deepens the concept of signs and reflects about communicative behaviour between signs in its diverse objective, linguistic, media aspects...
The work Anonymous rests of the shipwreck reflects on the shipwreck of ideals - coming from the French Revolution, from the social movements of the XIX century and the first half of the XX century -, as much on the side of the political powers, as on the side of the majority of society. It remembers in it relevant people of the field of thought and of creation, protagonists of historical avantgardes, as well as key socio-political events that happened in the world.
In another work Walking in between the discourse centers on the idea of "between", that subtle space between people, between feelings, between events, between the political correctness and incorrectness... and the decision of walking in between.
Garden of written words deepens on the duality between freedom of expression and self- censorship. While the voice of poets of the XX and XXI century is heard by reading their texts, the silent eloquence of the self-censured illegible texts remember so many ideas that we cannot express and, less so, write even to our closest people...
Alongside an extensive screening of video works discussed here: this paper was presented at the Symposium Geteilte Zeit: Kunstgeschichte als Internationaler Dialog / Shared Times: Art History as International Dialogue, at the European Academy in Berlin, 25 - 28 March 2008. The book Gisela Weimann (ed) Geteilte Zeit: Fragen und Antworten (Edition Eselsweg, 2008) is available in German.
Copyright © : Concha Jerez
N.Paradoxa : Issue No. 20, 2008