Untitled - EMAF

AUSSTELLUNG // EXHIBITION
A botanist's place of work is sketched, possibly in a botanical garden or a greenhouse. Everything gives us the impression that the protagonist
has only been absent for a short while. Splendid flowers, seedlings, overalls, gardening implements and notes. She has left behind
traces that lead into a video. Birdsong and noises from the forest emanate from a kind of floral parallel world. The occasional click of a
camera. Individually stirring flowers freeze with the sound of the camera and are characterised by botanical sounding names, most of
which are male. The plants are spellbound in the frame and, at the same time, small significant changes become apparent, such as double
pistils, displaced geometry and colours. Media cultivation or mutations of the imagination - two planes that start to blend in the memory
of the fictitious botanist.
The process becomes completely anthropomorphous by her voice, which indicates an erotic rendezvous amidst the floral landscape. The
botanist is dreaming. The imagined, the experienced, the world of categories and trial series, of flowers, greenery and soil are blended
together. This work plays on the affinity between the media artistic process and human interventions in nature.
Ilka Lauchstädt, *1958 in Osnabrück. She studied Arts, Media, Film- and Media Art at Osnabrück University and the Deutsche
Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin. She has been a member of many juries and gained numerous awards and grants. Her triptych ›Provokation‹
was awarded at the ›Digital New Art Award‹ Rödermark/Frankfurt, she gained the female artists' grant Film/Video of the state
of Berlin, a grant from ›Maecenia‹ Foundation, Frankfurt (D) and an artist's grant for Film and Video from the state of Lower Saxony as
well as the major award for video of the ›6th International Film- and Video Contest‹, Chiba (J) and the prize of the International Video
Festival Istanbul (TK). 2000 to 2002 guest professor for Communication Design (Moving Image) at Darmstadt Polytechnic (D), 1996 to
2001 artistic employee (Arts and Time-Based Media) at Berlin University of Arts (D) and till 1996 artistic academic employee at the
Baden-Württemberg Film Academy, Ludwigsburg (D). Ilka Lauchstädt lives and works as a media artist and curator in Berlin.
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