Kerstin Engholm Galerie
Constanze Ruhm / Emilien Awada – Panormais Paramount Paranormal
14.11.2014 – 10.01.2015
Breaking up cinematic structures
By Reimar Stange
Constanze Ruhm / Emilien Awada’s “Panoramas Paramount Paranormal” is one of the highlights among the exhibitions currently shown in Vienna. The presentation is not unproblematic, but this is what constitutes its quality. The problem is already announced in the exhibition’s four-paged instruction leaflet: the working approaches are characterised by their uncontrolled complexity whose associations are hardly understood. But it is precisely this complexity that protects the exhibition from being one-dimensional, something that is omnipresent these days, and not only in galleries.
PPP shows photos and two short films. Both films are pre-versions for a planned longer film that narrates the story of a French film studio burned down in 1971 and the housing complex that had been constructed in its place. Also the photos refer to this story and its link to topics such as simulation, ghosts, casting, archive, birds, multilingualism, studio, film history. Thus, PPP is characterised by the typical moment of provisionality and the “open, not yet complete form of narration” (Ruhm).
The film includes images of the newly constructed housing complex, the voice-over alludes to Hitchcock by recounting that “the birds did not return this year”. Subsequently, actresses appear, auditioning for the role of a ghost, recalling both to the film “Juilette ou la cle des songes”, 1952 by Marcel Carne and to Derridas work “Marx’s ghosts”, 1993. A scene from this film is collaged – it is staged in an artificial forest. This motive is one of the most important ones of the entire work, which questions the fictitiousness of reality at various levels – e.g. by introducing the studio where Godard produced “Une femme est une femme” in 1961. The film is set in the Parisian district of Porte Saint Denis and thus documents the location. The famous film scene, taking place in the striptease dancer’s apartment, was filmed in a studio, because shooting the film in the designated “real” apartment had not been permitted. Thanks to the intelligent conjunctions in PPP, “reality” and its “simulation” are repeatedly connected in parallel. The exhibition is a must!
Kerstin Engholm Galerie
1040 Vienna, Schleimühlgasse 3
http://www.kerstinengholm. com
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