translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
010615 : Künstlerhaus Wien - Mats Staub: 21 – Reminiscences on growing up
Künstlerhaus Wien
Mats Staub: 21 – Reminiscences on growing up
17.05.2015 - 21.06. 2015
Remembrances of the future
By Susanne Rohringer
The video installation "21 – Reminiscences on growing up" by the 43 year-old Swiss artist, Mats Staub, is presented at this year’s exhibition of the Vienna Festival - a very fitting addition to the theatrical emphasis of the Festival's program.
In more than 10 vertical video screens, and against a black background, Staub shows interview partners of differing ages who relate incidences that took place during their lives. The protagonists come from German-speaking countries, from Johannesburg or London, or speak French. Every one of them are asked questions relating to remembrances of when they were 21 years old.
Straub, who also works as a dramaturge, helps himself to a theatrical trick which makes these interviews so powerful and sometimes also disturbing: he takes about an hour's interview material and edits it down into an 8-minute long sound image. He then plays this sequence to the protagonists and films their reaction. In these video sequences, we see how those interviewed listen to their heavily edited narrations. We see their mimic of astonishment, laughing until tears of emotion run down their cheeks. And we hear their closing commentary on the description of their lives as heard by them.
For this project, Staub spoke to more than a hundred people. He describes it as a long-term project with which he has been on the road since 2012 in Frankfurt, Weimar, Belgrade or Basel.
Staub has succeeded in producing a fascinating panorama of differing life stories which are not beholden to psychology or oral history. Straub uses a little bit of all these methods in his work. But essentially, the creative element of the author is what remains – it intervenes dramaturgically in these stories. This determines the rhythm of the video installation. There only remains the question of the author's motive. Why would someone create such a comprehensive compilation of life?
Künstlerhaus Wien
1010 Vienna, Karlsplatz 5
Tel: 01 587 96 63
Fax: 01 587 96 36
email: office@k-haus.at
http://www.k-haus.at/
Opening hours: daily 10 – 18 hours, Thu: 10 - 21 hours
010615
Künstlerhaus Wien xx
1010 Wien, Karlsplatz 5
Tel: 01 587 96 63, Fax: 01 587 96 36
Email: office@k-haus.at
http://www.k-haus.at/
Öffnungszeiten: täglich 10 - 18, do 10 - 21 uhr
Künstlerhaus Wien xx
1010 Wien, Karlsplatz 5
Tel: 01 587 96 63, Fax: 01 587 96 36
Email: office@k-haus.at
http://www.k-haus.at/
Öffnungszeiten: täglich 10 - 18, do 10 - 21 uhr