Training Set (screen memory II) (2021)
Two-channel video installation, colour, sound, duration: 6 min looped.
Two-channel video installation, colour, sound, duration: 6 min looped.
The video installation Training Set (screen memory II) explores the ways we deal with plastic and (ecological) trauma - both in confronting the issue of duration and the very idea of infinite transformation. The work consists of a system of video monitors, headphones, wall paint and a plastic object laying on the floor. The monitors play two videos that combine footage of a playful, childlike imagery with scenes that were shot with the plastic object on a scrapyard. The soundtrack of the work is a compilation of a talkshow about a young girl remembering dying in a previous life.
Within the videos different spheres of consciousness and time are created and the idea of the plastic object becoming a shapeshifter comes into play; from one second to the next it is becoming a surfboard, becoming a body, becoming the water. Viewers of the work are invited into the same vulnerable and exposed relationship as the plastic protagonist has with the created environment; it is shape shifting and almost not being in one's one body. It becomes less a thing than a trace of its movement. However, the plastic protagonist presents itself as a frightening, deathly body it seems to be dependent on protection and care at the same time.
Within the videos different spheres of consciousness and time are created and the idea of the plastic object becoming a shapeshifter comes into play; from one second to the next it is becoming a surfboard, becoming a body, becoming the water. Viewers of the work are invited into the same vulnerable and exposed relationship as the plastic protagonist has with the created environment; it is shape shifting and almost not being in one's one body. It becomes less a thing than a trace of its movement. However, the plastic protagonist presents itself as a frightening, deathly body it seems to be dependent on protection and care at the same time.
Leonie Kellein (b. Switzerland) is a visual artist and filmmaker. She studied at HFBK University of Fine Arts Hamburg and Goldsmiths, University of London. In her current work she reflects on terms of memory, trauma and our expectations of matter and materiality. She has won several awards and scholarships including the Deutschland stipend by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the DAAD study scholarship and the Art School Alliance stipend by the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S. and the Karl H. Ditze Stiftung. For her short film Dream City she won the Jury Prize during the participation at the exhibition 'Urban Ecologies' at Weltkunstzimmer Düsseldorf. Her works have been shown internationally at film festivals and galleries such Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, International Filmfestival Visions du Reél and Kunstverein Schwerin. Alongside her artistic work she has also created videos for theatre productions at Kampnagel, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg and Thalia Theater in Hamburg. For 2021/22 she receives the Advancement Prize by the Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung IN:VISIBILITIES that focuses on the social and political dimensions of a long-digitalized everyday life that also encompass material and physical processes.
June 2021
@lon_secle
June 2021
@lon_secle