Category Archives: Video

AT THE HOUSE / IN THE GARDEN

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VIDEOSQUENCE and PHOTOGRAPHS: AT THE HOUSE / IN THE GARDEN
The work shows a section of the architecture of the former Botanical Institute adjacent to the Botanical Garden in Frankfurt am Main. The tree of the gods (Ailanthus altissima), which is part of the picture, invasively colonises the vacant spaces of large cities as a neophyte, including Frankfurt. In this place, the tree close to the house becomes a sign of vacancy and wasted potential uses.
The motif shows a small yet characteristic part of the building façade of the Kramer Building: the reinforced concrete structure clad in yellow clinker bricks, ventilation openings and windows closed with screens and wooden panels. The architectural elements photographed from the front create an abstract (pastel/grey) surface grid. Only the moving branches of the tree and the changing incidence of light and shadows make the image recognisable as a moving image.
In its naturalistic colourfulness and size, the video relates directly to the current presentation space. The movement of the light and the tree creates the duration. By mirroring the image and rewinding the time, the second part of the video simulates the course of light in the evening.
Two photographs taken during the video production process were edited for large-format prints. The first photograph shows the motif before the sunlight hits the façade. The second photograph shows the façade in sunlight. In the photographs, the abstraction in the greyscale draws attention to the differentiated formal structure of the motif, to the surfaces and lines that are shaped differently in the two states. The simultaneous visibility of the two image states, which are half an hour behind each other at the time of the photograph, provokes comparison and opens up a visible space of possibility.

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Glass Blocks #3

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VIDEO IMAGE: GLASS BLOCKS / THISTLE PLANTS
Video recording of a glass block wall in the laboratory building of the former Botanical Institute of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main: Pots of thistle plants (Sonchus gomerensis) stand in front of the glass block wall opposite the Botanic Garden's greenhouses. The leaves of the plants move in the summer wind.
The decoration of the glass blocks, an overlay of eight vertical and eight horizontal divisions, fragments the image of the plants beind the glass and makes them appear in a square structure in the recorded video image.
The finished video image is created according to the modular principle:
A glass block is selected, digitally cropped and inserted several times in the editing programme into a frame-filling grid that corresponds in detail to the original structure of the wall. Within the image grid, the same block is shifted on the time axis by eight seconds at a time. In this way, a total of 15 points in time and time sequences are listed simultaneously in the video in the sense of a time span set in the moment, visible in each image. The structure of the repetition remains recognisable because the time offset of eight seconds is within the range of short-term memory. In the video image, the restless movements of the plants and the changing light contrast with the austerity of the grid in the glass.

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Four Lemons

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A still-life motif: four lemons lie on a table.
On a sunny morning, the light fields from three windows move across the table.
The recording of this process, four hours long, results in the video.
The movement of the shadows is clearly visible in the section of the recording.
From time to time the wind moves the windows.
Mirrored surfaces of light glide across the table, following the course of the shadows.
The light and the shadow change the yellow of the lemons.


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Still Live: 2019-04-24

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Another sunny morning in Dresden, 2019, 24 April.
In the large room with three windows, there are two water bottles on the table. The light fields of the three windows gradually shift, now slightly offset with the course of the sun and the year, across the white tabletop and the piece of wall behind it.
The video work is made at the same time as on 16 April, as a recording over four hours.
Slowly and almost regularly, air bubbles rise in the bottles. From time to time, the wind moves even brighter patches of light through the motif with the window panes, running towards the visibly wandering shadows.


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