Everlasting Legacy
Karoe Goldt (D)
Paulette Phillips (CA)
Gail Pickering (UK)
07. 02. – 15.02.2009
Opening
6 February 2009, 18h
The exhibition “Everlasting Legacy”, as part of Forum expanded, a program of the 59th International
Film Festival Berlin, is the inaugural event in the new space of Antje Wachs Gallery in
Charlottenstr. 3/Berlin-Mitte. The centre of attention of this year’s Forum expanded program
is the re-evaluation of the characteristics of formats like film, video, photography and television.
The exhibition “Everlasting Legacy” extends this topic in order to reflect on the historical sense of
cinema in different ways. How do we work within the space of endless divisibility — one that the
historian represses in the service of linear time — without getting lost, without losing the critical
agency at which we aim? Or according to Lacan, if there is no historical relation, how do we relate
to the presence of our past?
While Karoe Goldt yields an ambiguous stillness in order to reflect on a personal history,
the immobility of the image meets with the intellectual, mental and physical mobility
of the spectator. Paulette Phillips submits a piece on modernist aesthetic debates over reality and
representation, with the caveat that such debates now entail the recognition that history is always
already coupled with the historian’s desire, and memory coupled with his or her repression.
Gail Pickering is investigating from inside the history of cinema, taking into question the particular
conception of the Western genre.
The video “i deeply regret” (2009) by Karoe Goldt is about the failed change of revenge and
satisfaction. It is basically made from one selfportrait that Karoe Goldt took of herself in 1998.
It shows the attempt to liberate oneself from the victim's role through a fantasy
of self-empowerment. In other words: After a long, long time someone fights back, while humming
the theme song from the film Rocky.
The installation “History appears twice the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” (2008)
by Paulette Phillips is inspired by the poetically tragic aura that surrounds E 1027, a villa on the
Cote d’ Azur built by architect and designer Eileen Gray for her lover
Jean Badovici in 1929. Having built the house as a romantic getaway, Gray eventually walked away
from her labor of love. For a period of time it then became known as Le Corbusier’s house, while
Gray languished in obscurity. The installation includes three prints, a sculpture and a video.
The footage of the video “Shell” is edited in a manner that suggests a dynamic relationship associated
with certain areas in the villa. In several instances the camera lingers on Le Corbusier's signature,
prominently displayed throughout the house. Ultimately, “Shell” traces Gray's original vision and the
evidence of abuse the house has endured since its sensuous beginning, suggesting an emotional
topography that lies beneath the villa's structure in an attempt to renegotiate the enduring legacy of
Gray's modernism.
The video by Gail Pickering “Yippie Yi Yo Kayah” (2009) has its world premiere on the occasion
of “Everlasting Legacy”. Filmed on location in “Pioneer Town”, a decrepit Californian
desert artefact from Hollywood’s Cowboy golden era of Roy Rodgers and the “Cisco Kid” in the 40s
and 50s, the work explores the melancholy and amateurism of a group of “Old west” re-enacters
where Pickering invites them to perform a repeated shoot out. The work observes their backstage
preparations and wooly rehearsals prior to enacting their instructed script. Beneath the almost
documentary depiction of the slapstick characters, the subtext of the “right to bear arms” is in focus.