Invited Artists



Pawel_Althamer | Michael_Asher | Nairy_Baghramian | Guy_Ben-Ner | Guillaume_Bijl | Martin_Boyce | Jeremy Deller | Michael_Elmgreen und Ingar_Dragset | Hans-Peter_Feldmann | Dora_Garcia | Isa_Genzken | Dominique_Gonzalez-Foerster | Tue_Greenfort | David_Hammons | Valérie_Jouve | Mike_Kelley | Suchan Kinoshita | Marko_Lehanka | Gustav_Metzger | Eva_Meyer und Eran_Schaerf | Deimantas_Narkevicius | Bruce_Nauman | Maria_Pask | Manfred_Pernice | Susan_Philipsz | Martha_Rosler | Thomas_Schütte | Andreas_Siekmann | Rosemarie_Trockel | Silke_Wagner | Mark_Wallinger | Clemens von Wedemeyer | Annette_Wehrmann | Pae_White

 


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Clemens von Wedemeyer

* 1974 in Göttingen, lives and works in Berlin and Leipzig



Projekt: Von Gegenüber (From the Opposite Side)

The old Metropolis Cinema on Berliner Platz at the main train station is nothing more than a façade. It has been standing empty for years – the seats have been sold, the screen has yellowed. The exception – a cinema not showing any films – has become the rule, creating a kind of in-between space that Clemens von Wedemeyer knows how to exploit, reflecting the conditions of the cinema, the perspectives that have long-since been internalized. Inside, in the dark auditorium, von Wedemeyer’s film has been running as an infinite loop, showing the outside, the area around the train station, the immediate surroundings of the cinema. The artist combines documentary footage, shot with a hidden camera, with staged material. Actors play passers-by, and passers-by thus become actors. A film without a plot, it is a silent observer.

The station is like the cinema that offers lonely people the chance to feel they belong. “This is where people congregate who don’t otherwise know where they belong or who haven’t yet found their place in this city.” Clemens von Wedemeyer lets these people on the margins of society express themselves, silently. The Metropolis Cinema has also been an information point for skulptur projekte münster 07 and a venue for numerous events from the supporting program.


Biography

Clemens von Wedemeyer, whose works have recently been displayed, in an individual exhibition, at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, presents condensed images, rather than linear plots in his films. He produces documentary essays with characters, which are systematically broken, by occasionally, blurred pictures and sounds, film quotations, dramatic lighting effects, and the impossibility of identifying space and time, which produces the effect of density in sober – factual sequences, which, in turn, become metaphoric images, outside time and space. Action is often isolated, placed in an alien context, making everyday scenes appear absurd. The documentary character of the film evaporates, especially, since the film's concepts are loops and fragments. But Wedemeyer's works are not attempting to avoid reality. They are, rather, an approach at doing justice to its complexity. Many films are accompanied by a corresponding "making of", explaining the conditions and the background of the production. "Making of" provides information, that influences how we decode the film and, in many cases, reinforces the absurd and metaphorical aspects. Wedemeyer's works deal with the following themes: social/societal development and power structures, and the relationship to architecture, space, and the city. ‚Silver Heights' and ‚The Settlement’ show the architecture of two, prefabricated, concrete slab housing settlements, as an expression of political change and failed utopias in urban planning.

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