Bjørg Tarangers video cycle "City Angel" presented in Düsseldorf at Schirmerstrasse 22
Emne: Extending relations
Fra: "Ralf Rosowski" <ralf.rosowski@due-erre.de>
Dato: man, mars 19, 2007, 13:47
Til: Bjørg Taranger <bjorg.taranger@gmail.com>
EXTENDING RELATIONS
Bjørg Tarangers video cycle "City Angel" presented in Düsseldorf at Schirmerstrasse 22
A hospital bed is the place of medical care.
The place of water and soap, creams, isopropanol, blood, sweat and body liquids.
The screen of Bjørg Taranger is binocular in a meta sense.
Half splitted into a left and a right scene and a small gap in between.
"Preparing a Private Space" is using extended materials like the
sexy legs of a nurse, wearing WHITE high-heels, both signed with a
Red Cross on the heel side, running straight along an endless hospital
corridor followed by the camera view. There seems to be no coming
further.
A Red Cross on white background is recognized as a protection symbol
in conflict. (1)
It’s a dramatic case of emergency or it is a case of escape?
The two nurses collaborative preparing a hospital bed on the screen
right beneath are not really impressed about the running angle
left side. They are completely absorbed by careful making up the
hospital bed, highly concentrated on details, very accurate by
smoothing the linen, contemplation by working. Love, devotion and
human warmness is the spiritual substances which fills the space.
"Happening with nurses", celebrating a dance by preparing a hospital
bed, wearing German birkenstocks and a white nurse coat, displaced
bra straps shining trough. Suddenly the left half of the splitted
screen gets BLACK for a second, an interruption followed by a right
away change of the splitted screen relations.
How fragile Angels are.
City Angel. A love dance or a dance macabre? Lay down and smile. (2)
Bjørg Taranger overcomes the restrictions of a dualistic
understanding (3) by the expressive use of dance. Intelligent and
skilled cutting is a lonely job. But getting teached about dance by
the nurses Arja-Leena and Paula is a spiritual interaction.
"Our body should go with our soul, with our spirit, shall get moved
like rush from the divine breath of the inside. Amen" (4)
First time I saw this video works in Ålesund, in the late summer of
2004. I got deeply moved.
"Angels are with us.", I noticed and continued travelling.
I called Bjørg Taranger more than a year later. After some intensive
talks we decided to present City Angel during oct. 2006 to the public
in Düsseldorf at SchirmerStraße 22, an apartment, temporary used as
Gallery, near by the city.
The installation in Düsseldorf was quite simple. "Preparing a Private
Space" (5'29'', 2000) and "Happening with nurses" (5'44'', 2004), got
directly and simultaneously projected on different white walls in
same heights, both in a black-&-white-mode, relatively small sized
and looped. The room used for presentation didn’t got darkened, no
curtains got used to dim-out the light from the windows.
We had a crowded candlelight opening, a clean place filled with the
flickering light of the City Angel projection, interfering with all
the specific individual experiences, fears and hopes of the visitors.
We enjoyed an interesting mix of guests.
After the show, the secretary of the house organisation office,
responsible for SchirmerStraße 22 called me, asking about City Angel.
"Is there a social encountering place founded?" Ups, - I understood.
"Yes, indeed.” I answered smiling.
Ralf Rosowski, march 2007
contact: ralf.rosowski@due-erre.de
(1) The Red Cross is the original and official protection symbol
declared at the 1864 Geneva Convention. It is, in terms of its color,
a reversal of the Swiss national flag.
(2) Pina Bausch, contemporary german choreographer, "Sit down and
smile." (stage direction, 2002)
(3) Rene Descartes (1556 - 1650) Descartes suggested that the body
works like a machine, that it has the material properties of
extension and motion, and that it follow the laws of physics. The
mind or soul, on the other hand, was described as a nonmaterial
entity that lacks extension and motion, and does not follow the laws
of physics. This form of dualism proposes that the mind controls the
body, but that the body can also influence the otherwise rational
mind, such as when people act out of passion.
(4) Peter Altenberg (1859 - 1919) was a writer and poet from Vienna,
Austria. This quote is taken from the frontispitz of Dr. John
Schikowski "Geschichte des Tanzes" (Büchergilde Gutenberg, Berlin,)
1926
RALF ROSOWSKI 2007, ON BJØRG TARANGERS VIDEO WALKS
Text on Bjørg Tarangers "video walks"
Tourism is just a post-modern phenomenon. It’s travelling for fun. A sign of having enough time and money to afford. Tourists like places, where a lot of tourists are. Tourists are always in between voyeurism and exhibitionism.
If he get lost in the strange, alone without any covering, it gets interesting (Roberto Rossellini’s "Viagigio in Italia"). Now he has a chance to experience general eternity of life and the more or less near end of the own living simultaneously. He is in between hope and fear.
Most people panic. Some make films about it.
Bjørg Tarangers new work "video walks" are episodes about life and living seen from a perspective of a lost tourist.
Ralf Rosowski, Düsseldorf 2007