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Die Bürger von Calais (Die Neptun-brüder) / 2000 / 3'45" planet 22 Geneva, Switzerland www.planet22.net |
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THE VIDEODie Bürger von Calais (Die Neptun-brüder) In an urban environment, its appearance characterized by post-ww2 architecture, a group of six men stand in front of a deserted gas-station. The men pose motionlessly in extremely stylized positions: they recreate Rodin´s sculpture "the burghers of calais" as a tableau vivant. The camera repeatedly circles the group in slow motion. It is a camera shot in the aesthetic style of a normal film momograph on Rodin´s work. The men, posing here as the heroic "burghers of calais", however, do not fit this image. They are people often seen standing outside of bars. Judging from their appearance they are alcoholics, unemployed or homeless. A female voice recites a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke accompained by melancholy music. Rilke describes childhood memories of feelings of hope and trust, and laments the pain of losing them. The circling movement of the camera and the dynamic of the increasing and decreasing swell of music underscores the distanced feeling of revolving time referred to in Rilke´s text.
In "the burghers of calais" Rodin erected a monument
to the civic values of individual responsibility and determination.
His sculpture was commissioned by the city of Calais in 1884.
It is a reminder of an event captured in Froissart´s "chronique
de france": during the hundred years war, Calais was besieged
by english troops.
Rodin´s monument is usually interpreted as a playdoyer
for the "civic ideal ort he role model of the citizien"
and as an expression of the tragic heroism of the "great
individuals" who put their freedom to the test by their
decision to accept death. (Rilke´s renowned interpretation
of the sculpture can be understood in the sense of this existential
explanation.)
The "burghers of calais" were never erected on the spot Rodin had intended. They are a placeless artwork. In this sense, they were taken as a mould standing at hand and employed in the description and re-evaluation of a social reality that would otherwise remain excluded from the fora of cultural representation. Jan Verwoert |
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THE SPACE/COLLECTIVEplanet 22 fuera de la órbita by planet22
Internet translation:
Nuestro planeta es nuestro hogar, nuestro punto de partida, nuestro centro del mundo. Con ella viajamos a través del mundo. De ella avanzamos en el mundo, a ella que nos retiramos. De nuestro planeta desafiamos el mundo, y huimos del mundo a nuestros planetas. El mundo es el ambiente de nuestro planeta. La circulación entre el planeta y el mundo es vida. Separándose y doblando para arriba, buscando y encontrando, actuando y observando. El mundo es el alfabeto a descifrar, nuestro planeta el texto, que intentamos crear. El mundo es el contexto, en el cual ponemos nuestro texto. El mundo es el contexto, que encaja nuestro texto. - - - Our planet is our home, our starting point, our center of the world. With her we travel through the world. From her we advance into the world, to her we withdraw. From our planet we challenge the world, and we flee from the world to our planet. The world is the environment of our planet. Circulation between planet and the world is life. Spreading and folding up, looking for and finding, acting and observing. The world is the alphabet to decipher, our planet is the text, which we try to create. The world is the context, into which we place our text. The world is the context, which embeds our text. - - - Unser Planet ist unser Zuhause, unser Ausgangspunkt, unsere Weltenmitte. Mit ihm gehen wir auf Reise durch die Welt. Von ihm aus stossen wir in die Welt vor, um uns auf ihn zurueckzuziehen. Von unserem Planeten aus fordern wir die Welt heraus, und wir fliehen vor der Welt auf unseren Planeten.
22 rue de berne |
