Project | Scenarios | Events | Supporter | Information | 2nd Section | deutsch
Project | Scenarios | Events | Supporter | Information | 2nd Section | deutsch
In her five-channel-video installation Alma Mater, Kaucyila
Brooke focuses on the Arkadenhof (central courtyard) of the Vienna
University. With its 154 busts of prominent and exclusively male scientists
of the last 300 years, it is a striking example of male dominated bourgeois
representational architecture. The work is based on footage from 2006, when
the Arkadenhof was undergoing renovation. The videos trace and negotiate representational
politics from different perspectives, questioning the relationships of knowledge
and authority that are put in relief with each other in this ensemble. Two
channels show women artists and scholars, appropriating these hallowed halls
for their gatherings. The continual and restless movement of the camera documents
the architecture and every single head, exposing and visually exploring a
text of mastery and authority. A paired video reminds of the pedagogical forms
of the ancient Greek philosophical school of Peripatos (which literally means
‘walking about’), showing the women protagonists while walking
the colonnades and openly discussing the changing status of women in the structures
of education. Another video employs the imagery of the building's reconstruction
to sift through the material constituents of the institution’s historically
developed identity. Workers pile up stones and load a moving belt that removes
rubble from the inside courtyard to the outside street. Pedestrians walk by
the street facade of the University building littered with signs of its dismemberment.
The installation of video projections and monitors is combined with hand drawn
chalk inscriptions on floor and walls, in which Brooke diagrams, labels and
comments on the architecture's pedagogical structures.
A second installation combines wall drawings by Sofie
Thorsen and two films produced in co-operation with Katharina
Lampert.
The film Wenn wir da sind (When we are there, ca. 16 min)
shows teenagers in a small industrial town of the Steiermark (Austria). Before
the backdrop of mountain and small town scenery, in an atmosphere of extensive
summery sweet idleness, the protagonists are spending their time skating,
swimming and hanging out together. The places occupied by the teenagers through
their sheer presence, time and again show an urban air, yet the mountainscape
remains very present. As well in clothing and gestures of the protagonists
elements of urban subcultures such as graffiti, skating and punk appear. The
teenagers seem to remain mostly unaffected by the camera’s presence,
yet in several moments they are directly reacting to it. It is apparent that
they let themselves be filmed the way they are, yet at the same time play
themselves for the camera.
The film Die Schlacht (The Battle, 2:30 min) shows another
group of children and adolescents from a small town in Upper Austria. As part
of a research conducted in 2005 the children were asked about their own places
and the stories connected to them. Unsolicited a group of boys decided to
re-enact the fight over a self-built hut in the forest, that took place the
year before. The re-enactment starts slowly, yet at some point switches to
an aggressiveness that is no longer mere play.
The wall drawings refer to the places that the children and adolescents occupy
as their stages. They are composed of elements from the town and countryside
sceneries that are the setting for the films. In drawings reduced to black
and white the locations become abstract and exchangeable.