ISABELL HEIMERDINGER
On Days Of Clear, Perfect Light
January 20 to March 07, 2024
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Photos © Andrea Rossetti
On Days Of Clear, Perfect Light
Isabell Heimerdinger has developed an atmospherically rich setting for her exhibition at Galerie Mehdi Chouakri. Upon entering, the attention is drawn to the 42-minute film On Days of Clear, Perfect Light, presented on a partition diagonally placed in the room. Behind it, visible at first only as an artificial gleam of light, is the second part of the spatial concept, a green, yellow, and purple ‘forest’ made up of neon tubes shaped like bamboo poles. This installation forms part of an ongoing series of neon signs in the artist’s oeuvre. Yet the emblematically reduced formalism of these fluorescent tubes moves beyond the realm of image and language and subtly incorporates the sound of the film.
In the film On Days of Clear, Perfect Light, shot in São Tomé and Príncipe in the equatorial region, we experience nature itself as the true protagonist. Here, with the landing of the Portuguese captain João de Santarém in 1471, is where half a millennium of turbulent colonial history began, evident until this day in many aspects of daily life. Yet the film provides few clues as to the location. The viewer’s attention is drawn away from the expectation of an ordered plot toward, one might say, a sensual, atmospheric, and subjective perspective. The experiences of the implied traveller and the viewers are caught in a state of uncertainty, somewhere between recognition and conjecture and between physical experience and remembered transformation of (actual) personal encounters and observations.
The film’s title promises the bright light of day but opens by taking us into the black darkness of the tropical night. The light of a torch momentarily reveals dense vegetation in the dark. Only the night sounds of birds and insects can be heard.
in the dark, nothing connects the illuminated spots [00:54]
like dislocated moments in time [01:19]
The tentative light briefly shines on a turtle burying its eggs in the sand. Cut. An aeroplane approaching an island at night, a bumpy drive over dark roads, distant human voices. Looking upward is a failed endeavour, given the black depths of the night sky. Cut at [03:43] — the clear light of day, palm trees, the sea. The eternal sound of ocean and waves. A man casts the thread-thin line of his fishing rod, an archaic gesture.
everything is still the same here
but the mind needs to adjust to see it [01:19]
How does one artistically convey the experience of an existential otherness of nature, a distance, an entity that does not need humans, that excludes them from its rhythm? Isabell Heimerdinger imposes respectful distance on herself and on us viewers: to wait, to look, to listen, to silently tune in to the self-reliant world of surf, wind, and the sounds of nature, of light and dark, growth, transformation, and decay. In the next take, the camera accompanies a man to a small island, where he does what he seemingly always does, day after day, year after year. Cut. Nighttime in the village, music pours from scattered loudspeakers; in the darkness, only the silhouettes of people, voices, shouts, and engine noises.
At the first light of dawn, the turtle disappears back into the sea. The camera follows the people as they head toward their daily work on the sugar cane plantation, wash clothing by the river, or play on the beach.
there is no way to make ourselves invisible [21:20]
you can easily get lost [24:00]
Once again, twilight, darkness, heavy cloud cover, moonlight. Now, the camera captures a few still-life-like moments of life in the city. The pastel-coloured fragility of Portuguese colonial architecture, sleeping dogs bathed in the first light of dawn, a food stall diligently being set up.
rain and more rain [34:09]
And again—palm trees, the wind, the sea. Nature in its grandeur, sublimity, and closedness. One last journey across the island. Twilight night, rain, darkness even by day, it seems.
As the film ends, we see a woman contemplatively in her home, the superimposed sentence indicating a personal relationship. »Do you remember the first time we met?« After that, rain, hesitation before parting. Scenes in the village, a fire, life goes on, even without us.
it was almost dark when we left [38:17]
Isabell Heimerdinger’s film bears great breadth, rhythm, calmness, and naturalness. Nature’s circulatory energies, closeness and distance, the inclusion and exclusion of humans — all these themes are already evident on the formal level, in the combination of documentary and directed sequences, the steady persistence of the camerawork, the editing and sound.
As viewers, we are not searching for a ›story‹ — the protagonist is nature, its magical splendour, its terrifying otherness. Linked, inevitably, to the immediacy of the experience of nature, to the discrepancies between remoteness from nature and individual perception.
The dimension of language is of particular importance, recognisably developed from within the artist’s oeuvre. Sentences appear at irregular intervals as language tableaux on screen. These texts are not always synchronised with their references in the film; instead, they also add dimensions of memory whilst viewing. Engaging with the sentence formations and the language fragments, the unlocking of an echo chamber occurs, adding further levels to the bodily experience of closeness and alienation in and from nature — intellectually, emotionally, and conceptually.
»For me, this is the essence of the film: attempting an approach and simultaneously failing at it. Deliberately disregarding familiar clichés, historical facts, and the entire postcolonial discourse. Realising that nothing can be disregarded. The unspoken (in the truest sense of the word), the gaps. There were two journeys: the physical journey followed by a journey of the material. In between, so much had shifted, making defining a position within the whole difficult. I consider the fact that we allowed precisely this — openness, fragmentariness, ambivalence — to be both a weakness and strength of the film.« (I.H.)
This element of dissociation, self-reflexiveness, and the bipolarity of seemingly unambiguous images and ›stories‹ is, as in her earlier works, a genuine characteristic of Isabell Heimerdinger’s oeuvre.
— Renate Wiehager
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ISABELL HEIMERDINGER
On Days Of Clear, Perfect Light
January 20 to March 09, 2024
Isabell Heimerdinger has developed an atmospherically rich setting for her exhibition at Galerie Mehdi Chouakri. Upon entering, the attention is drawn to the 42-minute film On Days of Clear, Perfect Light, presented on a partition diagonally placed in the room. Behind it, visible at first only as an artificial gleam of light, is the second part of the spatial concept, a green, yellow, and purple ‘forest’ made up of neon tubes shaped like bamboo poles. This installation forms part of an ongoing series of neon signs in the artist’s oeuvre. Yet the emblematically reduced formalism of these fluorescent tubes moves beyond the realm of image and language and subtly incorporates the sound of the film.
In the film On Days of Clear, Perfect Light, shot in São Tomé and Príncipe in the equatorial region, we experience nature itself as the true protagonist. Here, with the landing of the Portuguese captain João de Santarém in 1471, is where half a millennium of turbulent colonial history began, evident until this day in many aspects of daily life. Yet the film provides few clues as to the location. The viewer’s attention is drawn away from the expectation of an ordered plot toward, one might say, a sensual, atmospheric, and subjective perspective. The experiences of the implied traveller and the viewers are caught in a state of uncertainty, somewhere between recognition and conjecture and between physical experience and remembered transformation of (actual) personal encounters and observations.
The film’s title promises the bright light of day but opens by taking us into the black darkness of the tropical night. The light of a torch momentarily reveals dense vegetation in the dark. Only the night sounds of birds and insects can be heard.
in the dark, nothing connects
the illuminated spots [00:54]
like dislocated moments in time [01:19]
The tentative light briefly shines on a turtle burying its eggs in the sand. Cut. An aeroplane approaching an island at night, a bumpy drive over dark roads, distant human voices. Looking upward is a failed endeavour, given the black depths of the night sky. Cut at [03:43] — the clear light of day, palm trees, the sea. The eternal sound of ocean and waves. A man casts the thread-thin line of his fishing rod, an archaic gesture.
everything is still the same here
but the mind needs to adjust to see it [01:19]
How does one artistically convey the experience of an existential otherness of nature, a distance, an entity that does not need humans, that excludes them from its rhythm? Isabell Heimerdinger imposes respectful distance on herself and on us viewers: to wait, to look, to listen, to silently tune in to the self-reliant world of surf, wind, and the sounds of nature, of light and dark, growth, transformation, and decay. In the next take, the camera accompanies a man to a small island, where he does what he seemingly always does, day after day, year after year. Cut. Nighttime in the village, music pours from scattered loudspeakers; in the darkness, only the silhouettes of people, voices, shouts, and engine noises.
At the first light of dawn, the turtle disappears back into the sea. The camera follows the people as they head toward their daily work on the sugar cane plantation, wash clothing by the river, or play on the beach.
there is no way to make ourselves invisible [21:20]
you can easily get lost [24:00]
Once again, twilight, darkness, heavy cloud cover, moonlight. Now, the camera captures a few still-life-like moments of life in the city. The pastel-coloured fragility of Portuguese colonial architecture, sleeping dogs bathed in the first light of dawn, a food stall diligently being set up.
rain and more rain [34:09]
And again—palm trees, the wind, the sea. Nature in its grandeur, sublimity, and closedness. One last journey across the island. Twilight night, rain, darkness even by day, it seems.
As the film ends, we see a woman contemplatively in her home, the superimposed sentence indicating a personal relationship. »Do you remember the first time we met?« After that, rain, hesitation before parting. Scenes in the village, a fire, life goes on, even without us.
it was almost dark when we left [38:17]
Isabell Heimerdinger’s film bears great breadth, rhythm, calmness, and naturalness. Nature’s circulatory energies, closeness and distance, the inclusion and exclusion of humans — all these themes are already evident on the formal level, in the combination of documentary and directed sequences, the steady persistence of the camerawork, the editing and sound.
As viewers, we are not searching for a ›story‹ — the protagonist is nature, its magical splendour, its terrifying otherness. Linked, inevitably, to the immediacy of the experience of nature, to the discrepancies between remoteness from nature and individual perception.
The dimension of language is of particular importance, recognisably developed from within the artist’s oeuvre. Sentences appear at irregular intervals as language tableaux on screen. These texts are not always synchronised with their references in the film; instead, they also add dimensions of memory whilst viewing. Engaging with the sentence formations and the language fragments, the unlocking of an echo chamber occurs, adding further levels to the bodily experience of closeness and alienation in and from nature — intellectually, emotionally, and conceptually.
»For me, this is the essence of the film: attempting an approach and simultaneously failing at it. Deliberately disregarding familiar clichés, historical facts, and the entire postcolonial discourse. Realising that nothing can be disregarded. The unspoken (in the truest sense of the word), the gaps. There were two journeys: the physical journey followed by a journey of the material. In between, so much had shifted, making defining a position within the whole difficult. I consider the fact that we allowed precisely this — openness, fragmentariness, ambivalence — to be both a weakness and strength of the film.« (I.H.)
This element of dissociation, self-reflexiveness, and the bipolarity of seemingly unambiguous images and ›stories‹ is, as in her earlier works, a genuine characteristic of Isabell Heimerdinger’s oeuvre.
— Renate Wiehager
Untitled (Bamboo) 7, 2024
Neon soft green
153 cm
Photos © Andrea Rossetti