Xaverl
Mixed-Media Installation, Hinterconti Hamburg, 2007
Collaboration with Wolfgang Fütterer.
Based on the three Austrian/German films “Sissi” from the 50ies, as an Homage to the 25th death-day of the lead actress Romy Schneider. Those three films where typical for the 50ies, that time after the war when the dark times of the second World War where slowly “fading”, when nobody wanted to talk about it anymore and people wanted to see happy, and mostly cheesy films about the „ideal world“. These films where some of the most successful German movies of all times, seen by more than 25 million people in the cinemas alone. We took out the most significant symbols of the films, curtains, Sissi’s favorite pet, a young deer, sound like church bells and the over killing curtains. In two of the three rooms the visitor could hear constant church bells and waltz-music and see a rotating golden deer. We put ourselves in life-size paintings of the Emperors, Franz-Josef of Austria and Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary (Sissi) by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. Additionally, we recited every single dialogue between Sissi and Franz-Josef of all the tree movies as a video-dialogue on two facing monitors.
Digitally modified portraits of the emperor-couple that the film is based on by Franz-Xaver Winterhalter, Emperess Elisabeth of Austria/Hungaria and her husband, Franz-Joseph I of Austria:
Stills from the video-dialogue between the two artists (including all the dialogues between the two main actors from the films):
