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Julian Rosefeldt (Germany, 1965) |
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Julian Rosefeldt makes films distinguished by great theatricality and cinematographic narration. His works appear as complex mise en scènes aimed at emphasising the contradictions of human behaviour through the contrast between the deliberate absurdity of the situations portrayed and the apathy of the ensuing events. |
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Requiem, 2007
4 channel film installation
super 16 mm transfered onto DVD 16:9
loop 12’ 5’’
Courtesy the artist; Max Wigram Gallery, London
Photo Credit: CCCS, Firenze; Valentina Muscedra |
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Requiem, s.d.
4 channel film installation
super 16 mm transferred onto DVD 16:9
loop 12’5’’
Courtesy the artist; Max Wigram Galery, London |
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An architect by training, Rosefeldt is best known for several multi-channel video installations, and for three works in particular – Stunned Man, The Soundmaker and The Perfectionist – that make up the Trilogy of Failure, produced between 2004 and 2006, in which the artist investigated several everyday activities of "urbanised" man, highlighting the grotesque and exaggerated aspects.
Requiem, the work selected for Green Platform, is a video installation made in 2007. It is composed of four panels, arranged in a square to form a spatial setting, onto which four films made in the heart of the Brazilian rainforest are synchronously projected. Brazilian Amazonia is home to the largest area of primary forest in the world: 370 million hectares, constituting a third of the entire global total. Today this area is seriously threatened by logging multinationals. The work suggests we reflect on the state of health of the forest and on the foolishness of certain human behaviour. Immersed in an extraordinary context, whose richness is conveyed by the hum of insects, birdsong and the sound of raindrops falling from the trees, the viewer is invited to participate in a sublime and absolute experience. However, the rapture provoked by the sight of this magnificent landscape is interrupted by the falling of a tree, which produces a striking sound: a deafening, yet perversely attractive, thunder, which engages the viewer in a sensorial experience with great emotional impact. The falling of the first tree is followed by other, equally traumatic, ones. The existential yet symbolic nature of the event is amplified by the absence of human figures in the scene. The falling of the tree thus takes on a universal value, presenting itself as a reflection on death and the precariousness of life, beyond the mere condemnation of human behaviour.
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