Josephin Böttger
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Trapez Shortcut |
Tell me something about you and artistic background.
Until 2002 I worked on various short films, such as experimental fiction films and drawn animation films on super 8 and 16 mm, shown in festivals and exhibitions. The production of those films was often based on the use of double exposure and back-projection, made on a computerized motion stand, in order to visualize certain images of occurrences that are physically impossible in "real life". Thematically bound to themes like science research versus everyday life, the film material also sometimes was treated chemically in the process of "self developement". Since my diploma at the art school of Hamburg (HfbK) in 2002, I work with video, sometimes mixed with digitalized celluloid. Mostly shown in exhibition spaces, I create "videoloops" that have neither a recognizable beginning nor an end. The presence of different projections inside the exhibition room invites the audience to move between them and connect them in a assiociative way. The correlated loops appear to have different approaches to one theme, such as the conditions of weightlessness in an urban landscape or the sleeping patterns of somnambulists. In February 2007 I started with the project "mobile projections in public space" where moving projections appear on the the surfaces of urban buildings. First I was carrying the projector in a suitcase, for example in New York, where the images of the Loop "Blackrocketbear" (running bears and starting rockets), appeared on the architecture of Manhattan. The second run was in the streets of Basel/SWI in June 2007. In 2008 and 2009 I continued the project in Hamburg, where I placed the projector and the generator on a wagon and made a plan to project certain scenes on certain sectors of the buildings.
Tell me about this film, initial idea and work process.
The artists`house in which I live and work is an old factory, surrounded by office towers, in an area of Hamburg where office buildings are growing fast at every corner. Many of them are abandoned or stay empty after they have been finished. When a bulldozer started to tear down a building in front of my studio, I decided to make a documentary about it. After the demolition, the construction went on for more then a year and while the new building was growing I worked on animated drawings, based on realistic images of the construction site. The "Trapez" project turned out to be a "work in progress". The first screening of a 20 minute version was a mobile projection onto the front of the "SKAM" building at the Reeperbahn, that contained a very busy exhibition space and studios for around 30 artists and was teared down in 2009. The construction of another "business building" will start soon. "Trapez shortcut" is an extract of the material, a montage where the beginning is placed at the end.
Are you working on new projects at the moment?
Since December 2009 I work on a project called "Pauli´s Metamorphosen", it reflects the changes of the district St. Pauli, the dock area of Hamburg and will be shown at the Linda Gallery (located in St. Pauli), in June.
Do you have specific influences in your film/video making?
A lot of it comes from the actual surroundings, but also news, architecture, litarature, science and music constantly influence me, as well as many artists, filmmakers and writers. The list would be much longer, some of them are Anri Sala, Cecily Brown, Philip K. Dick, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Stanley Kubrick, Agnes Varda, Alain Resnais, Marcel Duchamp, Norman Mc Laren, Caroline Leaf, Paul Feyerabend, Stanislaw Lem, Andrej Tarkowsky, Valie Export, Chris Marker, Matta Clark, William Wegman, ect.
Why is it important for you to show your film/video in a festival?
Festivals, more than ever, celebrate an important cinematic experience, where people come together to watch films, that have a great variety.
What role do you think Oslo Screen Festival should have to promote your work?
I think to make the Festival and arrange the films in time and space is a great work, thank you!
