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In
1993 Marianne Pitzen, director of the Frauenmuseum in Bonn and
Professor Annette Kuhn, art historian of the University in Bonn,
start making preparations for the project Stadt der Frauen.
The point of departure is the collaboration of academic staff with
visual artists. The aim is to make a connection between the life
and work of women in the Middle Ages and the activities of women
at the present time by means of new technologies in a large
exhibition.
The title of their project Stadt
der Frauen alludes to the book of Christine de Pizan
(1364-1430) called The City of Ladies, in which an
appeal is made to all women to actively take over and construct a
city of ladies in order to improve the quality of life. We can
transpose the hopes, excitements and the demands for high
standards and excellence to our days where we [and not only women
..] project the expectations and the questions that accompany
these suppositions on the availability of new technologies. How
can a combination of former insights and recent technologies be
part of a solution to the contemporary problems we are facing? The
video-registration of performance Von Märchen und Gesprenster
constitutes the heart of my installation in the Frauenmuseum in
Bonn. Placed on a pedestal table in a space that is surrounded by
three walls, it functions as a streetlight. That is why the
installation is called:
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Unter
der Laterne - a title that in the German language has more
than one connotation. The video displays the re-enactment of an
ancient ritual that was performed once a year by all the women
from Cologne. This registration as a core component of the
installation is taken up as a treble mirror. First, there is the
ceremony itself, described in a letter by Petrarca, dated August
9, 1333. Then there is the re-enactment of the ritual by way of a
performance accomplished in 1992. And finally there is the fact
that we can broadcast the occurrence at whatever point in actual
time. Thus, we can 're-live' the event every time we read the
letter of Petrarca, but also in watching the video-registration of
the performance and make any combination thereof.
In order to complete the installation as a 'circle of imagination
in time', I construct a skeleton of frames with spotlights that
cast light towards the corners of the room, thereby throwing
shadows on the walls. Apart from the radiating TV monitor no other
direct artificial light is involved so that the dispersed shadows
determine the atmosphere of the space. The names of eighty women -
ordinary women who lived in Cologne between 1302 and 1565 - are
scattered all over the floor as grains of sand. The visitor has to
kneel down in order to read the names, thus engaging actively in
real time/space and make a combination with the various dimensions
of time that are offered. |
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