ROMANA SCHEFFKNECHT 1982 2013 - romana scheffknecht videos

WARBURGZIMMeR. A coLLAGe AnD FILM FooTAGe
FRoM An ARcHIVe
Andrea Hörl
Romana Scheffknecht has been working on the Warburgzimmer group of works consistently
since 1995. The selection on display, a series of images and one video, alludes to the working
method of the passionate collector and archivist Aby M. Warburg (1886–1929). The result is
an archive, not about the art theorist Warburg but a contemporary, fragmentary and creative
archive, never-ending, always renewing itself and in many respects inspired by Warburg’s life
and his works.
Photographs, film stills, historical documents, newspaper clippings, pages from books, old press
photographs, notes, drawings etc. are organised behind glass in black or white wooden frames
on a black or white background. Felt pen drawings by Romana Scheffknecht are a recurring
element: familiarly rapid in gesture and sometimes adorned with words, reminiscent of film
storyboards. Another aesthetic attribute runs through the work: The preference for black-andwhite
— which is not only to be read as an allusion to archival work by association — that may
occasionally be interspersed with original newspaper excerpts and photographs in colour, does
however lend the majority of images, the video, and so Warburgzimmer a cool, distanced
and elegant uniformity. Graphics or typographical elements, photographs and images with
similar motifs inspire the arrangement ultimately decided upon. The work in no way replicates
overfilled, dusty, yellowing archives. On the contrary, everything looks very neat and tidy, all of
the information is clearly laid out, no searching is needed. No historical thread nor any chronological
enumeration is to be found in the selection of material used for the collages. They
are thematic fields set in frames. In the largest — six-part — work, for example, the selection
focuses on the topic of seeing and not seeing.
The key piece in Warburgzimmer is a video. For the approximately two minute long black-and-
white footage Romana Scheffknecht filmed the index box 118 Krieg und Kunst 1915 / 16
[war and art] by Aby Warburg. It moves too fast to be able to read the index cards individually.
Nevertheless still showing enough to introduce the viewer to Aby Warburg’s way of working
and his way of thinking.
A cosmopolitan and a Man / Woman of Letters
Born in 1866 in Hamburg where he grew up, studied art history, history and archaeology in
Bonn, Munich and Florence, he studied psychological medicine in Berlin, and went to Strasbourg
to write his dissertation. 1 Following his military service in Karlsruhe he undertook several study
trips, to: America, England and France; moved to Florence, returned to Hamburg in 1904.
Often quoted and very typical for him is Warburg’s self-description: „Hamburger at heart, Jew
by blood, Florentine in spirit“. 2 A quick glance easily suffices to show how eclectic Warburg
was and the deep interest he took in things as he went through life.
Romana Scheffknecht is interested in exactly this kind of biography in her daily research.
And I should mention here, peripherally, that the artist’s biography shows parallels to that of
Warburg: various courses of study at home and abroad, she moves in different professional
fields — art, film, theatre, philosophy etc. — she is a people-watcher and encounters others
with open eyes and ears, and she is both a seeker and a traveller.
42 43
Archivist
The Warburg Institute in London houses contents of what had been the Kulturwissenschaftliche
Bibliothek Warburg. Aby Warburg voluntarily renounced his inheritance and any accompanying
privileges as the eldest son. 3 In exchange, his wealthy banking family were to furnish
him with books until the end of his life. Warburg subsequently began systematically collecting
books in 1901. By 1929 the library contained approximately 60,000 volumes, all indexed by
category and openly accessible to the public. Thanks to relatives and influential friends of the
late Warburg, in 1933 the majority of the collection, which not only included books but also
large numbers of photographs and the famous index boxes, was brought to safety in England.
Most of the wartime index box has remained in Hamburg because it was left behind as secu-
rity to create the outward impression that the library was just being transported to England
on a three-year loan. 4
Romana Scheffknecht selected index box 118, labelled War and Art 1915 / 16 for her video.
A calculation based on extrapolation indicates that there were 72 such boxes with about
90,000 papers in the wartime index file — these are described by Peter J. Schwartz in the
article Aby Warburgs Kriegskartothek. Vorbericht einer Rekonstruktion. 5 Only three of these
boxes have survived. Along with box 118, box 115 Krieg und Kultur [war and culture] and box
117 Aberglaube im Krieg, Kirche und Krieg [superstition in wartime, church and war] all three
of which are now at the Warburg Institute in London. The remainder of the wartime index file
was apparently destroyed by fire in Hamburg in 1943. 6
The index cards are sheets of normal paper sized 10.8 cm x 14.8 cm. There are spaces marked
at the top for entering bibliographic details, title and, of course, source references. There are
excerpts taken from newspaper and magazine articles, and at least nine different people’s
handwriting can be discerned, among them that of his wife Mary and of his secretary Clara
Hintze. Ten daily newspapers were scoured every day, as well as domestic and foreign journals
and weeklies. 7 Only about every tenth entry was an excerpt from a book.
This boundless mass of index cards is continually being re-subdivided into new categories and
each individual box is, in turn, subdivided by headings. Warburg was strictly against cutting