Claudia Reiche
says
about the photo THE PAINTER AND THE MODEL (by Vita Buivid):
I don't have a series in mind, it is rather a picture - like that:
the slightly fatter nude model and the well-dressed Lady with the perfect
Hairdo standing beside her. The whole photo is shot fairly diagonally,
squeezed into a corner next to a cupboard. The camera is angled and it just
looks great.
Yes, one gets the feeling one is in the room -
and who is taking the photograph there?
The two of them have such air of intimacy already that one asks oneself:
and it's me who looks at them now?
Or who's taking the photograph there?
It immediately points towards the beginning of a story.
Friendship.
about BELLA's paintings:
The style in which the female bodies are painted - what does it remind you of?
Well - it reminds me of - it is rather two-dimensional. It gets somewhat
frescoesque and has a certain way to turn the bodies into patterns, into
ornaments.
These associations are linked to my researching the early forms of staging
Musicals.
I'm very fascinated by the patterns Busby Berkely has introduced in his
Hollywood Revue Films of the thirties. There, female bodies, that is many
female bodies in identical costumes and make-up, become huge ornamental
patterns - that's at least my association.
I know it is a completely different medium - but here things become so
abstract that it is more or less about the form.
Let me associate freely - well, it does remind one of many classical
artistic styles and the main component is Art Deco. I do have the
impression these paintings are all in all very nostalgic. That they recall
passed cultures, from a hint of Kranach to Art Deco. That lots of things
are combined in them. But the concept doesn't work, there are
contradictions in the paintings. If I look at the way certain Dalmatians
are painted, I find they have typical shadows as in Photo realism. The way
certain eras, or techniques which influenced painting get mixed, stacked
and at the same time they stay two-dimensional, which is repeated in the
way they are painted and in the backgrounds which are so ornamental.
about the Film RESERECTION by Bella Mateeva and Volodja Sacharov:
what came to your mind spontaneously?
The video version I've just seen reminded me very much of films of the
zsaristic period. The aesthetics of silent movies. I like Evgenij Bauer
very much. The 'silent witness' film, and the other things which have just
been rediscovered. It seems similar material. The nature of the motives,
the style makes it surrealist for me, there are many reminiscences there.
Yes, it is over the top and for me it fits to the idea of a time in which
electricity had just been invented.
All the nervous energy, the hysteria, the eccentricity, expressionist dance
and the liberation of the female body. All clichˇs in inverted commas.
Well, that's what came to my mind. Rather because it is so touching,
because it evokes such a nostalgic state of mind. As if there was some
hope, as if poetry, romantic thought was another way to live sexuality and
eroticism - linked to an artistic Utopia. It reminds me of that classic
artistic Utopia which makes possible another way of living. This tender
mood, this feeling that there is something crazy going on- that they were
open for experiments. Maybe one can fantasise even further and assume they
really do it and it is about catching certain moods - that it is about this
particular way of living.
Surrealists did interviews about sexuality. I imagine this scenario.
about Bella's photo series BORDELLO:
As if there was something precious, which doesn't exist anymore, here and
now. All those photos with corsets from the twenties. They have collector's
value, they are little gems because they are transient.
I think there are also many erotomaniacs who are aroused by these old
corsets. All these things are fetishes, collector's items. As if one had
been there oneself - with these classics of erotic art - and now one can
re-act it once more and really experience it.
about VITA«s photoseries LOVE ME AS I LOVE YOU:
I always get the feeling, especially with those of her prints which she
frames in crochet, that it is about making a mistake whenever one can make
a mistake. To relate to certain clichˇs, especially femininity and
girlishness, that which reminds of poetry-albums, to do exactly that which
is generally the 'anti-image' of the photographer and artist. And her
position in the art world is precisely this: To carry on doing embarrassing
things.
Normally this is not the way to deal with photos. It destroys them. It is
feminine tackiness and narrow-mindedness and it is done with conviction.
The photo is nothing noble anymore, it is now an object of affection, of
poetry-booklets. Well, of little 'heart and melancholy'-matters which get
ironised and projected onto the photo with camp tackiness.
Does that make you smile?
Well it is funny - or at least once you had translated the titles. They
strengthen the effect but apart from that it is all rather inaccessible to
me.
Claudia Reiche organizes the program of TheaLit in Bremen
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