HD Video 4:00 min.

Link to Video -> http://vimeo.com/50397896

Das Video I AM THE VILLAGE ist eine Zusammenarbeit der beiden Künstler Philine Sollmann und Sami Ben Larbi.

In der Arbeit geht es um unbewohnte Dörfer in den Pyrenäen, die aus verschiedenen Gründen von ihren Bewohnern verlassen wurden. Zum Beispiel wegen ihrer schwierigen Lage und der daraus resultiereden schlechten Erreichbarkeit, unfreiwillige Umsiedlung unter Franco (wegen angeblichen Staudammprojekten, die nie realisiert wurden), fehlende Nachkommenschaft oder Umzug in die Stadt.

Uns interessierte die Relation von Ort und Mensch, insbesondere die Entscheidung, seine Heimat zu verlassen (oder verlassen zu müssen). Anhand von Erzählungen und Spuren rekonstruierten wir die fiktiven Gedanken und Erinnerungen eines letzten Dorfbewohners.

HD Video 14:00 min.

Link to Video -> http://vimeo.com/16618022

In the 60’s my mother lived in an apartment at the corner of Schwedterstraße and Oderbergerstraße, in East berlin. This apartment building stood just a few meters away from the barriers of the DDR border, the Berlin wall. From her window she could look directly into the dead-zone and the other side, West Berlin. On the other side stood a viewing platform to allow the people in the West to look over the wall and into the East. In Mai 1969 my mother escaped into West Berlin. Not long afterward she stood on the platform and looked at the old apartment.

The video shows autobiographical text with sequences of view points, contemporary, taken from the same apartment. The photo, also contemporary, was taken where the viewing platform stood, looking at the apartment building. In the binder one can find archive photos of the area (sometimes taken by the Stasi).

HD Video 14:00 min.

In Hannover, over ten years ago, took place the World Fair, Expo 2000. 60 acres of land were designed and built with typical architectural national pavilions. The re-utilization concept that was to take place after the fair proved to be a failure. Instead of an IT center booming with science and research, the fair grounds are empty and in ruins. Where once stood a million visitors, is now unused and mostly empty.

The dancer Ruben Reniers was invited with his company at Expo 2000 to perform for the cultural program of the German pavilion. For “Hannover. Expo 2000. 2010.” he was asked to re-ennact, at selected locations on the fairgrounds, from memory the dance he and his dance company performed during the Fair trade, ten years earlier at the same place.

I also recorded, using fixed camera shots in July 2010, various former Expo 2000 sites. The resulting video is a stage-like situation, compounded by irregular appearances of the dancer in a few sequences. The work shows how the spatial experience of a big event losses its meaning afterward, leaving a haunting emptiness.