Romana Schmalisch
dal 29/5/2008 al 18/7/2008
Segnalato da
29/5/2008
Romana Schmalisch
Uqbar - projectspace, Berlin
Drehort Zukunft. The artist analyses in a model-like setup visions and developments of the image of the city. Central references for her are the Soviet history and the Soviet cinema of the early 20th century, which depicted visions and utopias of a new city in accompaniment to the proclamation of a new society.
/Drehort Zukunft/ represents the second of a series of exhibitions on
spatial concepts and contemporary architecture taking place at uqbar
project space. In the current exhibition, the artist Romana Schmalisch
(born in Berlin in 1974, lives and works in Berlin) analyses in a
model-like setup visions and developments of the image of the city.
Central references for her are the Soviet history and the Soviet cinema
of the early 20th century, which depicted visions and utopias of a new
city in accompaniment to the proclamation of a new society. In a complex
montage of quotations and elements from historical movies, film
properties and current city photographs and models, the artist
investigates the medial representation of the city.
The reconstruction of a property from Alexander Medvedkin’s film /The
New Moscow/ (/Novaya Moskva/, 1938) takes a central place in the
exhibition: a projection table oscillating between a city model, a
cinema and a plate camera. In the cited movie, an engineer travels from
Siberia to Moscow to present by means of this mobile experimentation
model his plans for the new city, a city he has never seen but always
dreamt of. At first, he shows documentary shots of old buildings being
demolished, whose place is then taken by the new city presented in
drawings and models. The artist now uses this recreated object to
project her film /Decision of the Party/ (2008), which combines Super8
material from today’s Volgograd with parts of the sound track from the
Soviet propaganda film /The Promise /(/Kliatva/, 1946). In this movie,
Joseph Stalin plans and realises “his” city, Stalingrad (now Volgograd).
Thus, the real city of today is juxtaposed with its past medial vision,
in turn becoming a projection of its own history within the film.
The concrete sculpture /Vorspann (Credits)/ is another reference to
Soviet cinema. This model is a reduced reconstruction (1:20) of the
pedestal for the steel sculpture /The Worker and the Peasant Woman/,
which became a symbol of Soviet movie production, as it appeared – akin
to Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer’s “roaring lion” – during the credits of all
films by the Mosfilm company. The sculptress Vera Mukhina had originally
created this sculpture for the Soviet Pavilion at the Paris World Fair
in 1937. Afterwards, it stood at a central square in Moscow for a long
time to eventually disappear in the archives some years ago, only
leaving its vacant pedestal.
These two spatial objects are accompanied by two serigraphs showing
further cinematographic images of the city as crystallisations of
situations of social upheaval. /Arbeiterquartier/ (/Working-Class
District/) and /Soazera/ use still images from Sergei Eisenstein’s movie
Strike (Statshka, 1924) and Yakov Protazanov’s /Aelita/ (1924) respectively.
/Drehort Zukunft /continues Romana Schmalisch’s work cycle
/Reconstructing Futures/, in which she analyses social utopias and their
ruptures in installations, films and performances. A first presentation
of these works took place at the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg,
which acquired the installation /Future Cities/ (2007) for its collection.
Opening Friday, 30 May 2008, 7 pm
uqbar - projectspace
Schwedenstrasse, 16 - Berlin