Wolfgang H Scholz -
4-channel video and photography installation
STATE 1988 PROJECT / ZUSTAND 1988 PROJEKT
When I was looking through a selection of 16mm film in my archive material to be digitalized, I came upon film material from 1987 to mid 1989.
At this time I was working on different projects most of which were black and white scenes that I thought of as test or experimental material. I had simply put the parts together as a rough cut.
When I looked at the rough cut for the first time after 20 years, I was surprised how well this material works to show the “stagnant time” in Dresden 1988 - one year before the fall of the wall.
The present project is a 3-channels 16mm film to video tranfered installation, and a 1-channel photo installation with the rough cuts of “STATE 1988” and photos of the “Series 1st of May 1988 - Demonstration” + “1st of May - HEADS – observation of observing people".
Photographs from behind of observing civil police man, looking at people at the 1st May Day - an important day with demonstrations of the power of socialist government
At the beginning, in 1987 when I was first gathering and working on the material, I didn’t think of it as something with a political or socially critical content. Today I can see, that in my images and filmic structures one can get a feeling for the time, including a social-political dimension of a time gone by; and make this feeling come alive again.
It becomes clear to me that in the years 1987-89, I worked at the gathering of materials like at a trauma; specially in the film "Überfahrt"/"Crossing"(The exchange and fleeing from a world one has lived in, into an unknown; which also happens in “STATE 1988”). This circumstance opens for me the possibility
to use my own dairy-texts and notations from conversations, for texts in off in the installation.3-channel instalation
still from documentary "state 1988" 16mm-to-video work, b&w/silent, loop, duration 4'05"
still from movie "CROSSING" 16mm-to-video work, b&w/silent, loop, duration 15'00"
still from documentary "state 1988" 16mm-to-video work, b&w/silent, loop, duration 4'05"
This documentary film is a kind of “inner, a taking in the feeling of the situation in the DDR, in Dresden. It is a very personal analysis of the situation in the DDR. It is a very personal analysis of the situation in the DDR one year before the fall of the Berlin wall.
The new 3-channel 16mm film to video installation "STATE 1988" is based on the 9:30-minute film of the same title that that I have been working on for four years. Mostly shot in Dresden, STATE 1988 is an artist's film that features amateur actors. And the movie "CROSSING" also shot in 1987/88 with amateurs actors in a not moving train. Camera: Stefan Wachner, 30 mins. / 16 mm / color / silent. Addition of a one-channel installation of the original rough cut of "STATE 1988" and 8 photos of the series "1rd of May - demonstration 1988" and 5 photos of the series "1rd of May - heads on behind - the double observing of civil police man observing"
The texts will be from my own diary as well as texts by Heiner Müller, Else-Lasker Schüler and excerpts of an original conversation about the possibilities of a politics in the future (1989).
