@ Carola Schmidt 2010 / Music: “Turbine Womb” by Soap & Skin
“Scream” is displayed as a one to three channel Video Installation.
DIE SCHWARZE ROSE.
“Die Ausstellung handelt von den treibenden Kräften der menschlichen Natur, die über den Verstand hinausgehen, den dunklen Instinkten in unserem Innersten und Verborgensten, der Essenz der Kunst. Trinken und Essen sind Wünsche, die erfüllt werden, aber der Körper kann sich nicht die goldenen Reflexionen einer fremden Haarlocke oder den Glanz einer anderen Haut aneignen. Nur das begehren erstickt die Flamme mit dem Feuer. Die Kunst bevorzugt das unzerstörbare Begehren, es ist der Appetit ohne Überdruss, es ist das Leben ohne Tod. Die schwarze Rose.”
(Hilario Galguera. Text to the Exhibition La Rosa Negra.)
click “read more” to read a text by Carly Fisher about “Scream”…
SCREAM
The face of a girl caught in the act of watching. We watch her, transfixed, as she is transfixed by what she is watching. The girl is a face in the crowd. By chance she has been found and she transforms into someone. She is watching someone on a stage that we will never see. We can only see them through her face. In this extreme act of voyeurism we are privy to her every vulnerability. She explodes, screaming, hysterical before withdrawing into self-conscious reflection. Constantly slipping, masked and unmasked, the face as facade and window is exposed. She mimics the show, re-positioning what is staged and backstage. Scream Schmidt shifts focus between multiple viewing points of the act of watching at a rock concert. Arriving with the intention to film the band on stage, she turns to focus on the audience, zooming in on a fan’s face. A triangle is created in which the corners are continually rotating. Near the stage and behind the camera, Schmidt has the viewpoint of the band, watching the crowd. Her viewpoint becomes that of the rockstar. She watches the girl in the crowd. This is the only face we see. The girl, blown-up, becomes our star. She watches the star she has come here for. In her film, Schmidt reflects on the seduction of watching in a contemporary context, where watcher and watched becomes one and the same. Pixelated like a painting, the girl in the picture reveals in her heightened hysterical state that the focus is simply a matter of where we stand.
Text by Carly Fisher / 2010