EDITION RUINE DER KUENSTE BERLIN
Achtung Aufnahme
A Videodocument by Wolf Kahlen
German, 28 Min., 1980/1992
In the night of February 1st, 1980, just
before his leave to New York City,
Wolf Kahlen gave the first and last videoperformance
in the history of the East German Regime at the occasion of his one man show
at the Galerie Schweinebraden, East- East, GDR,
which of course was an illegal place to show western decadent art. No
citizen in East germany was allowed or had the chance
to own a videocamera for obvious reasons. Only the army and secret police
used them.
Wolf Kahlen dared to smuggle a camera across the border from Berlin West,
where he lived.
A great number of artists, writers, philosophers gathered in the small
gallery, where the artist moved a camera
without viewfinder across objects and people in an endless rhythm, while the
picture was simultaneously shown on the small TV on the piano.
The artist a.r. penck played drums in the same endless rhythmic manner.
Whenver Kahlen stopped the camera
and called out ACHTUNG AUFNAHME (Beware, we are shooting) a.r. penck stopped
the music as well,
the image on the screen frooze, a plate of glass was put in front of image,
Penck went up and painted on the glass:
empathetically with the structure of the still or against it, by chance in
the colours of the German flag: red, yellow and black.
16 plates originated from the event, were later printed illegally as
silkscreens for a portfolio and smuggled out of the East.
This historic event on an open reel video tape is in this videodocument
commented by Wolf Kahlen 12 years later.
An exiting piece of East-West artists relations under the Socialist regime
and of great historic value of these two well known artists.
Numbered
and signed copy Euro 1.150,- Order here: ruine-kuenste.berlin@snafu.de
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Copyright 2000