Dancer: Dominik Feistmantl
Memento
Category: Video Art
Phantom
“People take photos of each other
To prove that they really existed
To make sure they are there
People take photos of each other
Believing that those moments
Would stay alive for all time”
Excerpt from: Menschen Machen Fotos gegenseitig, Die goldenen Zitronen (Songtext)
Brother of Sleep
“Come,O death, you brother of sleep,
come and lead me away from here;
release my little ship’s rudder,
bring me to a safe harbour!”
from: Johann Sebastian Bach Kreuzstabkantate, BWV56
Wailing Song
Countless small will-o’-the-wisps buzz in this artificial underwater world. They symbolise all the people who drowned between 2014 and 2022 on their flight to Europe. At the bottom of this sea, we listen to the stories of five young refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Gambia. They talk about their families, their flight from violence, their hopes and dreams.
The audio material was made available with the kind permission of the Junges Theater Augsburg.
Odyssee
The beauty of life and its antropogenic death.
Mantra
2022, video with sound, animation, 4:45 min
I watch my children play. I search their movements, their words, for traces of my own failures. Will they become the measure by which I am judged?
Mantra is an experimental short film that reflects on the myth of motherhood. What does it mean to be a “good” mother? And who decides?
For centuries, the image of the mother has been shaped by religious ideals—most notably by the figure of Mary in Western culture. She embodies male fantasies of chastity, obedience, selflessness, and unconditional devotion—virtues still echoed in patriarchal expectations of women today.
But this image is beginning to crack. Women demand autonomy, complexity, and contradiction.
Mantra questions inherited ideals and exposes the tension between inner truth and external judgment. A meditation on motherhood—not as myth or moral role, but as lived, evolving identity.
The Fitting
Old photographs in a family album come to life in a strange way. It is my eyes that look at me from their faces. I “slip” into my mother like into a piece of clothing, then into my father, my brother, my grandmother – one figure after another.
How does it feel to bring the dead back to life?
These are people with whom I was deeply connected – their stories continue to have an effect on me, I am their “descendant”. Who am I and what have they made of me? Does a part of them live on in me?
The Fitting is an experimental short film about memory, origin and identity – an attempt to get closer to one’s own roots physically and emotionally, image by image.
Postludium
The video Postludium is an obituary for the former gasworks area in Augsburg/ Oberhausen. It shows a ghostlike dance in the empty rooms of the building especially of a historical disc-type gasometer, built in 1915, and another recent disc-type gasometer (“Gaskessel”). This work raises the question of whether a building has a memory and thus also an identity.
The sound piece “Echoes of Industry” is a production by Gerald Fiebig and Christian Z. Müller. It was recorded in the “Gaskessel”.
Dancer: Alessandra La Bella
Patterns
Nature is determined by chaos as the driving force that leads to order. The strongest form of order is a pattern or rhythm.
2016, Videoinstallation, 9:50 min
“After all, rhythm is the repeated pattern itself – the code and the looping. And we all dance to that. We dance to a choreography that is pre-programmed into the interface. This choreography has power: it is the planned moves of control.(…) But really we are just making the same old moves that everyone else on the dance floor is pushing out of their (seemingly) free flowing limbs. We dance, and we are part of the choreography of control.” Renee Carmichael/ fleeimmediately.com
Part one – Patterns
Patterns are regularly recurring structures generated from modules in predefined order and repetition. As individuals and social beings we are naturally influenced by patterns: heartbeat and breath have a rhythm (auditory pattern). The genetic code resembles a pattern. Metabolism is determined by “patterns”: Nutrient absorption, transport, transformation and excretion – as well as the course of nature: spring, summer, autumn and winter – birth, growth, reproduction and death. We surround ourselves with patterns: wallpaper, patterned textiles, music, dance, customs, behaviour. Patterns give us security because they are predictable.
Part two – the machinery
Patterns also help individuals to fit harmoniously into society and contribute to its success. This fact makes us similar to machines. These work because drives and gears follow certain patterns and thus keep the machinery moving.
Part Three – Perpetual Motion
We are part of a system made up of individuals who function according to patterns. If one part fails, it is replaced by another working element – a principle that keeps a system in constant motion.
Dancer: Alessandra La Bella, Jennifer Ruof, Silvana Lemm, Therese Madeleine Thonfors, Natalie Farkas
Garden of Eden
We are the narrative of our own memories and others’ memories of us. This work is about home as utopia, about childhood as a lost paradise, and about identity that is fed by stories.
Here we are, sitting at the dining table of my childhood, listening to my father’s memories. A very intimate moment that will last forever.
