STILL FILM (Oh, America!)

MIXED MEDIA PROJECT, 2003

4 Groups of Photos, printed on DIN A4
Hotel Ensemble (Chair, umbrella, metal trunk, pedestal/bedside table, empty camel retro cigarette box, note material, pocket edition of „The Great Gatsby“) plus photo (Interior of a Hotel)
3 pages from the New York Times, April 2003

„Still Film (Oh, America!)“ invites the viewer to a stage like situation which contemplates the presumed myth or promise of „America“ in confrontation with recent impressions of the country through a recent visit (2003) and through media news. The installation combines a series of images taken on my journey to the East Coast of the United States (Boston and New York) with an object array evoking a situation of inbetween-ness. This interim room features news paper pages that were also encountered on location and a series of singled out sentences from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s „The Great Gatsby“.

The photos in this project take note in a way of an oblique encounter, noting situations of passage, of emptiness, of fleeting thoughts. They claim to protocol a place where it puts up resistance to a somewhat nostalgic gaze that had been prefueled on stories from the past and a cinematic fiction of the American dream. Arranged in four groups they come with titles of words often heard during the time spent there. „you know, what I mean …„, „it couldn’t have been better„, phrases, which may mean something but may be not.

Deutsche Zusammenfassung:

„Still Film“ ist der Versuch, vergangene Träume, ein nicht einholbares Bild von Amerika, eine photographische Bestandaufnahme, literarische Fiktion, ein Gefühl von politischer Ohnmacht und die vorgefundene Medienrealität anhand von Repräsentanten verschiedener Natur miteinander in Verbindung zu bringen – ohne die Dinge explizit beim Namen zu nennen. Daraus ergibt sich – lapidar ausgedrückt – ein materieller Denkraum für einen nach Rat suchenden Realitätsabgleich in einer abwesenden Anwesenheit.

All Quotes are taken from „The Great Gatsby“ by F. Scott Fitzgerald: