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Themesicon: navigation pathOverview of Media Articon: navigation pathSociety
 
Das Schweigen deutscher Räume erschreckt mich (Odenbach, Marcel), 1982Wenn die Wand an den Tisch rückt (Odenbach, Marcel), 1990Zygosis; John Heartfield and the Political Image (Gorilla Tapes), 1991
 
dial H-I-S-T-0-R-Y (Grimonprez, Johan), 1997Space Surrogate I (Dubai) (Lachenmann, Philipp), 2000I Only Wish That I Could Weep (Ra’ad, Walid), 2001
 

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setting by Franz Schubert, forms the basis of an emotionally dense montage linking a look back into his own past with a historical dimension. The losses mentioned in the title of social, family or religious ties are equally a threat and a relief. In Odenbach's installations, individual, symbolic objects identify the monitor's position in the space. Thus the unlocated electronic image is directly linked with the viewer. A few shoes on the floor in front of theTV screens in «Das Schweigen deutscher Räume erschreckt mich» (1982) are enough to indicate a number of cultural associations and possible behaviors. In his work on German reunification «Wenn die Wand an den Tisch rückt» (1990), the monitors themselves replace set pieces of German history. A GDR soldier is doubled up into two images. He is still guarding, at his fallen state's

 

behest, the Eternal Flame at the Neue Wache Memorial for the Victims of Fascism in Berlin's Schlossplatz.

The process of analytical deconstruction was a commonly used technique from the 1980s onwards.[23] Work with ‹found footage›—as it is called in the experimental film context[24]—is found in work by artists including Gorilla Tapes (Gavin Hodge, Tim Morrison and Jon Dovey), («Zygosis,» 1988), Johan GrimonprezDial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y,» 1997), Philipp LachenmannSurrogate I (Dubai),» 2000), Walid Ra'ad/The Atlas GroupI Only Wish That I Could Weep,» 2001) and many others. But these works, created from the 1980s, but above all in the 1990s, are marked by a strongly ‹synthetic› aspect: found fragments are placed in a new fictional context and new narrative structure, and often read ‹against the grain›.

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