Born in 1965, trained as an architect, Julian Rosefeldt embraced the world of contemporary art by looking for traces of “human-ness” in every-day details. In his exhibition, Paris et Les Cathédrales Inconnues (1997), and with his accomplice, photographer Piero Steinle, he showed the public the beauty of forgotten empty spaces – warehouses, attics or water. Then there was the exhibition, News (1998), an analysis of the construction of real-ness and of iconographic grammar used in television newscasts, and in Global Soap (2000), he creates a sort of atlas of body language as seen in soap operas and in the gestures of the icons of this mediatised era. All this he compares with the power of expression in religious paintings over the centuries of art history. He has made several video films to go with Thomas Ostermeier's productions.
Like modern Sisyphuses, groups of immigrants bear the metaphorical burden of the stereotypes stuck to their skin. On nine screens, and in nine films shown simultaneously, Turkish women vacuum in a cactus forest, Vietnamese men play yoyo... Amid the absurdity of repetitive acts and curious situations, coupled with the dignity of these enigmatic processions, familiar ethnic minorities carry out tasks in a floral, museum-like or icy universe, in a dream-like ballet. As far removed from documentary as it is from the embellishment of misery, this installation of living tableaux is a work of poetry.
Distribution
script, realisation and production : Julian Rosefeldt
Production
avec le soutien : du BMW Group
avec le soutien : de la Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin, du Sénat de Berlin, de la déléguée à la Culture et au Média du Gouvernement fédéral allemand et du ministère des Affaires étrangères allemand