Retrospective View

on the Videowork of

Hartmut Jahn

Nude Model: Inge - for Franz

Betacam SP, colour, 6 Min., 1994

And it's just that feeling: I am a woman, and then you might notice a man gazing after you and so on - I always think that's really great, I do enjoy it.

As long as I still had my period, I had much too much responsibility to live my sex life to the full, because I was quite afraid of having a child, which easily could have happened in the heat of the moment. And then I... I had too much responsibility for that, I didn't want to give birth to a little child, which I maybe couldn't even have nourished sufficiently or given a decent education and all that. So when it got too bad, that yearning for the other sex, I snatched my bicycle and rode 50 kilometres. When I got back home, I was exhausted, and then I slept and no longer thought about sexuality.

And later, after my period had ended, I thought, well now, you still have that drive, now you could actually go act out your sex life. And that's what I did. Desire is there, really, yes, yes, yes, why shouldn't it be. I will go into the coffin naked too, one of these days, but then nobody will think about that.

ALEX 7.9.1989

BetacamSP, colour, 12 Min. 1995

An open short story without end during the protest against the fraud of the elections in the former German Democratic Republic. Observed by the surveillance cameras at the Alexanderplatz on September 7th, 1989, the work of the cameraman is challenged.

Notorische Reflexe

Notoriuos Reflex

U-matic, colour, 20 Min. 1985

For one day we worked alternately with the performers on the visual realisation of their and our respective projects.

These five different performances were then combined into a group performance, with the additional creative influence of paintings from an exhibition titled "The Future of Metropolises" from Technische Universität Berlin(West).

We also tried to adopt in our work the working methods of "Notorious Reflex" so far as we could. There was no script for the video, but finally emerges a dramaturgy of confusing elegance. At the bitter end you will be delighted by the video-clip of the "Breshnew-Rap".

"This composition, the title of which means 'notorious', is a work of art using audio-visual images. By piecing together a number of separate images, the composer depicts the alienation that exists between man and the social circumstances prevailing in Germany today. This production is a successful experiment in capturing the city of Berlin through refracted imagery. The artistic way, in which the director uses the medium video to arouse interest in a large city, is worthy of praise." 8th Tokio Video Festival 1985

Berlin, Berlin...

Betacam sp, colour, 4.30 Min. 1989

Remix: The most sold music-single in Berlin summer 1987

Deutsch-Deutsche Fragmente

A Double German Fantasy

U-matic hb, colour 19 Min. 1985

"A Double German Fantasy" is an experimental work on fragments of the East/West German entanglement of words and pictures that arose from the fifties and sixties.

The time-journey begins in the fallow lying border crossings and leads out of the rubble and

destruction of post-war Germany to the erection of new concrete barriers. The gas-shells change borders in an intiring perseverance.

The rules of speech and the official pictures of the Newsreel from East and West wrap up the new relationship producing nostalgic feelings.

The videotape "A Double German Fantasy" takes these Newsreel pictures to pieces and sets them newly together. It extracts the pictures from the beautiful historical view making them rough edged. Instead of smoothing the edges it adds through the montage new facets. The journey ends in the new border security installations which unexpectedly turn out to be made of cardboard. So ends the videotape but not for a long time the story.

Immersion

1-Inch, colour, 13 Min. 1987

The Berlin Mozart Chorus leads us into a water world, where music and modern sirens are audible, constituting the temptation the swimmer encounters when diving into the medium water. The music of the sirens is arranged by the Berlin musicians Anette Kluge, Magita Haberland and Vera Schrankl. They scout with their music the place, the Charlottenburg Art Nouveau bath, constructed in 1908. The Berlin swimming baths of the turn of the century are - as in other metropolises - early signs for an artificial replacement of nature. In Berlin they are moreover an expression of the situated isolation of the closed town. Natural ways do not exist, there are only roundabout ways. The deeper the swimmer dives and gives himself up to the temptation of the musical infatuation, the more he withdraws himself from the source of music. This antagonistic roundabout way can really be regarded in a symbolical way: on one hand it expresses the change of media by means of diving, plunging and immersing and constituates in this meditative way a search for the sources and the truth which does not seem to be detectable at the surface. But also the fascination of the search, the immersion into newworlds of experiences, succumbs to an erroneous conclusion. The claustrophobic situation of the swimming bath, the cold of the tiled walls and the climatized hygiene reflects on the other hand a situated time-over mood in the modern metropolis, which can not do without this substitution (excerpt, Karl-Rainer von der Ahe, 1987)

Counterpart - Hong Kong Song

U-matic hb colour 13 Min. 1990

Facets of the city are described in a visually musical impression of 1990 HongKong in a modern montage with historical film material. There are still seven years to the abandoning of the political status, and the question is which cultural orientation will the city take. The previous history of HongKong has - apart from the anarchic organisation by the dollar - always been coined by the mixture of chinese and western, mostly imperial culture.

The video starts with the cantonese language and opera and their pecularities mainly based on phonetics, and the various pitches of which are hard to distinguish for western ears. The historical pictures comment on the musical expression: chinese inhabitants posing to the camera - British military members in private poses - Japanese poses of victory.

Wheel of Fortune

Betacam SP colour, 18 Min., 1991

A choreography for dance, music and video at well known locations of the former Berlin Wall: Bernauer Straße, Steinstücken, Treptower Straße and a recycling place for parts of the Wall. A new sight is shown, standing upon the Wall.