INSTALLATION 2020 - PRESENT
BEARING WITNESS
The istallation at the Resistance Memorial Foundation sums up my last 27 years of research about the Red Orchestra. The videos play in individual living rooms. The outer walls resemble a construction site because until today the work of this group is widely misunderstood.
Related link:
The videos in the installation
SURVIVOR
The sculpture TARGET was damaged over the years. I bandaged it and re-named it SURVIVOR for a show titled „Art is Either Plagiarism or Revolution“, curated in 2020 by Kathleen Sichelschmidt and Carola Stabe. When I was finished I fell 20′, crashed on to concrete slabs and had to be bandaged myself. After my recovery I burnt the sculpture and named the resulting video TRANSFORMER.
INSTALLATION 2010 - 2020
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
Video installation at Summerhall, Edinburgh, 2014
„The Kindness of Strangers“ is a video installation portraying two refugees: Twin Sister and Friend of Khayyam.
The viewers enter a tent, patched together from old, slightly off-white rags. In its windows, the two portraits appear in front of an animated pencil drawing of a turning wheel.
The videos run simultaneously, acoustically creating a Babylonian confusion like music. They question how far we’re capable of processing the information that’s provided to us and how far we can gain access to worlds that aren’t our own. The installation offers the possibility to assimilate spoken words in an abstract, intuitive fashion, or analytically by reading the subtitles.
VERNICLE
From FLIGHT, a series of installations about emigration and identity, curated by Anna and Andreas v. Bernstorff at Westwendischer Kunstverein, 2017
This project deals with emigration and identity.
VERNICLE is a video-installation portraying Napuli Paul Goerlich, a Sudanese activist talking about her 2014 occupation of a tree in the center of Berlin. While her action was political what interested me about the five days she spent up there in the wet and freezing November weather, surrounded by police-barriers was her inner life and the way she dealt with the situation on a personal level.
Installation view:
Video:
Video stills:
Related link
Exhibition Catalogue „Flight“
BEYOND THE WALL
Installation on 750′ / 230 meters of a piece of the former Berlin wall, 2017, curated by Carola Stabe
Animated model of the installation:
LINDENHOTEL
2010 video-installation at the former Stasi-prison in Potsdam, curated by Carola Stabe.
For the first time, people speak about their experiences at Potsdam’s notorious Stasi prison, in Stefan Roloff’s site specific installation.
Like moving frescoes, the installation projects their silhouettes on to the walls of their previous cells. The video below provides a brief walk through the installation.
ELSIE SUPREME
Video installation about drug abuse at „Adelsheim Leuchtet“, curated by Louis v. Adelsheim
Related links
Elsie Supreme video
More about Louis v. Adelsheim
CHAIRING THE MEETING
Installation at Kunsthalle Brennabor, 2014, curated by Christian Kneisel
The following project bears a resemblance to Mandela’s attempt to bring former inmates and guards together. In Brandenburg, a city where former Stasi agents still wield plenty of power I put two chairs on a red carpet. I publicly invited former agents or party members to come to the opening or make an appointment to sit on one of the chairs facing a victim of their system for a conversation in front of an audience. Yet, in contrast to Mandela’s concept here the victim would be unknown to them. I also announced that if no one showed up I’d interpret that as cowardice and burn the chairs during the finissage.
For the opening people who had been persecuted hung their Stasi-files on the white walls of the exhibition hall while the guests helped them.
For the finissage, the chairs were burned by pyrotechnician Friederike Unverzagt
Related link
More about Friedrike Unverzagt
ELSER
Concept for a public monument
In 2010, the city of Berlin made a call for a public monument for Georg Elser. I have deep respect for Elser as one of the greatest anti-Nazi resistance fighters of the early hour. So I decided to make an exception and, for once in my life, sent in a concept in a public-monument call for proposals. I’m not a fan of public monuments to put it mildly. Usually they tell nothing about the people they depict.
All by himself Elser had tried to assassinate Hitler in 1939 by planting a bomb in a beer-hall. Hitler left before the bomb detonated, Elser was arrested, taken to a camp and later killed. There are books about his life and his story is more than worth reading about.
No matter in which system, planting a bomb is an act of terrorism and it’s odd that a city should make a call for a public monument commemorating such an act.
My plan included a life-size super-realistic concrete-figure of Elser painted like a black and white photograph, walking towards an explosion also built from concrete and painted in the same fashion. It could resemble his bomb but just as well as the disasters of the war that he saw coming.
Not to my surprise the proposal was rejected.
INSTALLATION 2000 - 2010
ELEFANTE
Installation in Barcelona, 2004, curated by Juanjo Arzubialde
Sometimes it’s just good to build something without adding all too much meaning to it.
Related links
Elephant on 7th Avenue
More about Juanjo Arzubialde
1 + 1
Two installations at Glaskasten, Potsdam, 2005, curated by Carola Stabe
VOPOS IN THE EAST AND FOPOS IN THE WEST
Installation 1: Light boxes showing the Temporary Installation at Berlin wall
LIFE IN THE DEATH ZONE
Digital installation model:
Installation 1: A cozy room in which viewers are under constant observation
Installation view
A happy family-video plays in a TV set inside the installation
LIFE IN THE DEATH ZONE is permanently installed at Villa Schöningen in Potsdam
UNPREDICTABLE
Installation concept, 2006
A trailer parked in a nightly junkyard has a window in which a monitor is mounted. On it, through the window, we see a train passing without interruption as night turns to day and back to night. Intermittently, the night table with a glass of water on it, shakes and vibrates.
Outside, in the junkyard, a planet is projected on to the wall. In it, the video-loop of the train turns around its own axis.
Related link
More about Martin Rev
PRINZ ALBRECHT STRASSE 8
Installation Prototype built in 2006 at Rathaus Potsdam, curated by Carola Stabe.
The installation is based on a 1942 series of Gestapo-photographs of a group of resistance-fighters.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
Installation at Rohkunstbau, Schloss Marquardt, 2008, curated by Mark Girsbourne
Stained glass windows in churches and TV sets have a common quality. Both are fed by glowing backlight. In this installation, stained glass windows were set in motion to make them move like TV pictures.
The installation contains a chapel with a rosette and six gothic-shaped windows. Behind them, flat-screen monitors were mounted.
The “saints” in these windows are silhouettes of 30 individual people from all five continents, speaking in 30 different languages. They speak simultaneously about their ideal worlds. Exterior attributes like gender, race or age become invisible, words become indiscernible. The videos focus on the intensity of their speech and body- language.
Related link
More about Mark Gisbourne
LAYERS
Videos installations at Galerie Deschler, Berlin, 2009
COPS Full length video, 9:41 min with music by Martin Rev
Shot after 9/11. Parked cop cars produced a constant light-show near my apartment by the Manhattan Bridge. The blue and red lights that reflected on my walls made it feel at times as if I were living in a dicotheque.
HOLLAND, full length video, 58 min. with music by Martin Rev
taking viewers on a psychedelic trance-like ride through the Holland Tunnel. Built from footage of the tunnel.
Related link
Exhibition catalogue „Videos 1978-2008“
INSTALLATION 1990 - 2000
METAMORPHOSIS
Three video installations at Casa de Cultura Laura Alvim, Rio de Janeiro, 1990, curated by Marcia Fortes
NIVELES
Installations at Palau Solleric, Palma de Mallorca, 1991, curated by Carlos Goyarrola.
This show dealt with the space and motion that are inherent to every painting.
CIGUEÑAS / STORKS
Installation, old town Caceres, 1992, curated by Juanjo Arzubialde and Carlos Goyarrola
This is one of my favorite projects. When Carlos Goyarrola called me and asked if I’d want to do a project in the medieval part of Caceres in Spain I’d never heard of that city. He sent me a fax of its plan and it looked like an egg. I called him back and said that I’d do something with birds. He laughed and said: “Of course.” I asked him why and he said in Spanish: “Because it’s all full of cigueñas.” I didn’t know that word and he said: “Cigueñas are the birds that bring the babies.”
In Caceres I got an old carriage-garage in the medieval part of town as my studio and set out to build the birds out of branches and paper, using knives and glue, working without any modern tools as if it were the middle ages.
Unfortunately many photographs of the resulting installation all over the old part of Caceres are lost. Yet, these show what it was like.
As part of the project I also painted on a large sail I owned, left over from another project in Spain.
The landscape around Caceres which, like the city, is inhabited by storks.
Related links
More about Juanjo Arzubialde / Carlos Goyarrola
ZEIT IST GELD UND GELD IST GOTT / TIME IS MONEY AND MONEY IS GOD
Installations at Rheinströhm, Berlin, 1992, curated by Gerald Wesolowski
JESUS, installation-video, 1990, 4-min. sample:
OUR DAILY PLANET
Installation at Casa de Cultura Basauri, Bilbao, 1992, curated by Toño Gonzalez
The installation consists of forty-five vinyl-45-records suspended from the ceiling. Each is covered with a painting on its A and B-side. The original song titles are the only elements that remain visible from underneath. They provide the paintings‘ titles.
Transparent strings of fishing-wire hold the records at about face height. They turn around their own axis and keep creating new contexts among each other while the viewers move through them. One could interpret this as walking through a floating exhibition, a galaxy of small images or simply a cloud-shaped, three-dimensional image that encapsulates the viewer.
The lighting is created by overhead bulbs, diffused by a thin layer of paper and gauze.
A loop of the records‘ original music plays in the installation.
PINTURAS / PAINTINGS
Installation, old town Caceres, 1994
Curated by Juanjo Arzubialde and Carlos Goyarrola
To hang the paintings at the height I envisioned I had to hire a mountain climber as no suitable scaffolding could be found in Caceres.
Related links
More about Carlos Goyarrola / Juanjo Arzubialde
PENCE SPRINGS RESORT
Curated by Tim Nye at Threadwaxing Space, NY
This installation contains the life-size three-dimensional photograph of a prison cell that viewers can physically enter.
Related links
Exhibition catalogue
Pence Springs Resort Hotel – the 3-D photo is at the center of the installation. On their way viewers pass through a labyrinth where they lose orientation and see photographs on the walls. These photographs re-create my experience when I first came upon the Pence Springs Resort Hotel.
Documentary film „Seeds“
Photomorphosis – previously, the model of this installation was shown at a show curated by Joshua Smith. The booklet contains an insightful essay.
OASIS
Oasis takes subway commuters to a moment of warm, tropical light (achieved with daylight temperature bulbs), complete with sea and palm trees.
The place could be the abandoned 18th Street subway station that is passed by the 4, 5 and 6 trains as they slow down to enter Union Square. It would also work on any other abandoned station, such as the one just north of the Brooklyn Bridge station on the same line.
The installation consists of a 150 year old taxidermy giraffe head and neck anchored in a blue Fiberglas sea, surrounded by sand, astro turf and realistic palm trees made out of paper machè in front of a painted blue sky back drop. Its realism is comparable to the taxidermy displays at the Museum of Natural History.
The function of the piece is the offering of a brief moment of relief. Beyond that it should communicate the fact that even if you pass a place every day, you still can’t take it for granted. Often a great surprise comes where you would have least expected it.
Creative Time presented the installation concept OASIS to the MTA in the mid-nineties but the project was rejected for liability reasons.
INSTALLATION 1980 - 1990
GEDANKENGUT IN ÖL UND GUMMI
Opening of my first show at Gartow castle, 1981, curated by Anna + Andreas v. Bernstorff
THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON
Installation at West Berlin’s art academy HdK, 1981
Related link
„Der Ernst des Lebens“ the painting
MAUERVERGOLDUNG / THE GILDING OF THE WALL
For the 20th anniversary of the building of the Berlin wall many tourists were expected in West Berlin.
Together with my friend Louis v Adelsheim and others I decided to gild 20 m (65′) of the wall at Potsdamer Platz where most tourists would be bussed to the next day.
To give it a perfect gilding we had to first apply three layers of primer. The work was nerve-wracking as German and Allied patrols passed every few minutes. Eventually the crew got demoralized and left. As the sun was coming up Louis and I remained alone. We applied the final golden coat but were too tired to take pictures or wait for the tourists. So we went home and slept through theday.
Here are the only two pictures taken during the priming the night before at a time when most of the crew had left already:
Related links
More about Louis v Adelsheim
TEMPORARY INSTALLATIONS
In 1980 I developed a technique building sculptures from foam rubber, creating relatively light-weight objects with a surface which was perfect to apply paint to.
Unfortunately, all these sculptures have disappeared over the years. The following pictures show how I took them to the streets of Berlin.
FOAM RUBBER CHRIST
Related link
„Foam Rubber Christ“ The sculpture
VOPOS IN THE EAST AND FOPOS IN THE WEST
In 1981 prior to emigrating to New York I organized a group of people dressed as fake policemen to build a fake watchtower at a checkpoint into East Berlin.
The title of the action is a word-game. Vopos was the abbreviation for the Communist Eastern police, the People’s Police (Volkspolizei). Fopos is a word I invented. It represented government observation in the West.
RUBENS' NIGHTMARE
Related link
„Rubens‘ Nightmare“ The sculpture
SCHÄDELROLLER / SKULL ROLLER
Related link
Skull Roller installation
PAPER MURALS
Installation at Fashion Moda, Bronx, NY, 1983
Opening with break dancers from the neighborhood and performers, dancer Christina Jones with musicians Andrew Cyrille, Gunter Hampel and Jeanne Lee:
THE BROKEN WALL
After the PAPER MURALS show, in 1983, the gallery’s director Jacqui White and I planned a second show at Fashion Moda. The installation was inspired by a man who had tried to break through the Berlin wall with his car, breaking a gaping hole into it.
Related links
More about Jacqui White
CAR CRASH
In 1984 my old art-school colleague Rainer Fetting invited me to collaborate with him in the Terminal-show at Brooklyn’s army terminal. After seeing the giant space I suggested that we crash two cars and then paint opposite sides of it. The following pictures show the side I painted and some photos that were taken of us.
Related link
More about Rainer Fetting
BIG AUS' BLUE PAD
Installation at Kaufman Astoria studios, 1984
My first 3-D painting which viewers could set in motion by physically entering and moving through it.
BIG FIRE
Installation concept: My first digital video BIG FIRE from 1984 was built from a panorama of the width of seven monitors. I developed an installation in which the video would play in a structure that contained seven synchronized players and monitors. Though it was feasible technologically to create this set-up it was very complicated and this installation was never realized.
Related link
The „Big Fire“ video
STEFAN ROLOFF
Show at Art Palace, NY, 1984
STEFAN ROLOFF
Show at Art Palace, NY, 1985
KINETIC COLORS
Background: One evening at my studio dancer Christina Jones sat in front of a large, colorful canvas and I asked he how she’d like to dance colors. Subsequently we produced four shows at Limbo Gallery, each with different musicians (see below).
In 1987 we produced GREEN and YELLOW again with an ensemble of dancers at La Mama.
Four video-samples, filmed by Louis v. Adelsheim
Related links
„Paper Murals“ another collaboration with Christina Jones, singer Jeanne Lee, keyboarder Gunter Hampel and drummer Andrew Cyrille
3-D painting „Big Aus‘ Blue Pad“
More about Andrew Cyrille / Christina Jones / Jeanne Lee / Julia Jenkins / Louis v. Adelsheim