Das Spiel mit der Erinnerung - Die Bilderwelt des Künstlers Thomas Demand

A Film by Jeremy JP Fekete
HD 26’ / 52’
Commissioning editor:
Mechtild Lehning
A production of
LOOKS Filmproduktionen GmbH
in Coproduction with Radio Bremen
in Collaboration with ARTE
C O N TA C T
LOOKS Filmproduktionen GmbH
Fehrbelliner Str. 93
10119 Berlin, Germany
WWW.LOOKSFILM.TV
Producer: Martina Haubrich
Phone: + 49.30.323060-12
Mobil: + 49.151.140 70556
haubrich@looksfilm.tv

Thomas Demand
Oval Office
Oval Office
THOMAS DEMAND
He had his first solo show in 1991,
on the day when the art bubble
bursted in America. Fourteen years
later a retrospective of his work is
on display in the New York Museum
of Modern Art. One of his pieces,
»Oval Office«, was commissioned
for the cover of the New York
Times Magazine. Today, his work is
represented by five galleries from
New York to Tokyo and his photographs
are commanding six figure
sums.

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MEMORY ON DISPLAY
The Paper Illusions of THOMAS DEMAND
Badezimmer
Thomas Demand, internationally acclaimed
as a »photographer«; but yet not your usual
photographer, takes photographs of models;
photographs that are mostly recreations of
specific places. He builds life-sized models out
of pasteboard and paper in his studio that are
inspired by incidents he finds in the media and
private photos. Even though the models require
the greatest expenditure in the work process, he
photographs them, destroys and then dis poses
them afterwards. Regarding this he resembles a
Ceremonial Master during the Baroque period
who with tremendous expenditure also created
the perfect illusion of an artificial world for just
one festive evening.
His final photographic product, each one perfectly
mounted behind a mirror-like Plexiglas,
evokes the collective memory. The viewer sees
well-known visual images of scandals and political
or social events which have become part
of our common visual consciousness long ago.
As much as Demand reduces the images to a
few necessary details, the viewer develops his
own fantasy being confronted with the all too
familiar media images.
This happens with the »Badezimmer« (Bath
Room), where the Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein
was found dead in a bathtub in a
Geneva hotel in 1987; the old seating arrangements
of the German parliament when it was
located in Bonn; the devastated room in the
Wolf’s Lair that Hitler left just before a bomb
detonated.
Demand creates abstractions of these buildings
and rooms that we only know from photo graphs.
He creates them so that we can recognize that
they are constructed – by his choice of perspective
or of the moment. We can only tell the shot
has not been taken at the original location because
all individuality and every letter have been
erased. With these strange historical locations,

04
MEMORY ON DISPLAY
The Paper Illusions of THOMAS DEMAND
Heldenorgel
Büro
who seem to be free of history, Demand creates
a staged design for the amorphous shapes of
our collective memory. He describes it as such:
»It is not the event itself that interests me, but
rather the diffuse and shadowy existence that
they lead to in the shadowy and diffuse realm
of our memory.«
This film is not intended to become a portrait of
Thomas Demand. He would even refuse that. In
his private sphere, as in his work, the reduction,
the minimum, the omission of the persona is
also a leitmotiv that runs through Demand’s understanding
of who he is. Even more, the stories
of the locations that have been »cleared up«
by him need to be further examined. The facts
along with the personal backgrounds he keeps
referring to in his exhibitions neither indicate
nor do they explain.
In the piece »„Heldenorgel« (Hero Organ), the
viewer sees is an impressive work, a battle between
pasteboard and paper. But is the 3 x 2 meter
photo image pure craftsmanship or an very
artistic use of glue? The laconic title, »Heldenorgel«,
gives us a hint that something huge is being
presented. But who still remembers this myth?
Even Thomas Demand didn’t know anything of
its existence until an artist friend placed an old
postcard in his hand. It immediately cought his
interest – a resonating World War I memorial
– which became a victim to the collective amnesia
of an entire nation.Thomas Demand begins
to examine the lost memory. He drives to Kufstein
in the Tyrol to Austria, where the largest
free-standing organ in the world is enthroned.
4,307 organ pipes stand in a row like canons
under the roof of an old fortress. With a certain
amount of admiration, Demand still talks about
how this object gradually revealed itself to him.
The song »Vom Guten Kameraden« (The Good
Comrade) has been played on this organ, which
has been donated by veterans of the First World
War since 1931, in memory of their fallen comrades.
It reverberates from the mountain top to
the valley, to Germany and Austria and beyond.
»Not as brut as the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
which became a bulky obstacle that stands in
the way of visitors, than rather a memorial that
performs well,« as Demand describes this form
of honoring the dead. Just on the day the artist
called the director of the local music school,
who was assigned to play the organ every day,
the dismantling of the organ pipes was in progress.
The mayor was turning the instrumental
performance into a tourist attraction. Because
of this the organist resigned her job, due to the
objection to this plan. Demand set out for the
memorial right away and twelve hours later he
arrived in Kufstein.
While the craftsmen were working in the back
with their screwdrivers, the music teacher
played on the instrument at the artist’s request
for a last time. »Nothing but minor chords, like
the end titles of a film that didn’t had a happy
end,« he recalls. Since refurbishing the pipes,

05
THOMAS DEMAND
Parlament

06
MEMORY ON DISPLAY
The Paper Illusions of THOMAS DEMAND
Clearing
they number 4,948. The song, »The Good
Com rade«, could be heard once again at noon
throughout the entire town – with a favorable
wind up to ten kilometers away. The booming
notes could even be heard on the top of the
»Wilden Kaisers«. With his art, Thomas Demand
restored the `heroic organ´ for the public
memory.
Demand also has quite a sense of humor – as
demonstrated in his piece, »Landing« (Landing).
It was inspired by the picture of a mobilephone
photograph, shoot by a museum visitor,
that showed the results from an accident in
the Fitzwilliam Museum of Art and Antiques in
Cambridge, England.
In January 2006, a man stumbled over his shoe
string and fell down some stairs on three 300
year old vases from the Quing Dynasty. All three
vases broke. This mobile phone snapshot of
the bizarre accident quickly found its way to
the Internet and even the museum set up an
extra Internet site about the clean up and the
re sulting restoration process. The accident became
a media coup for the museum. »In April
that same year, the man was officially arrested,
under the suspicion that he had intentionally
tied his shoe strings together to gain attention,«
added Thomas Demand. Incontestably, Demand
has accentuated the comedic side for his reconstruction
of this photograph of the accident.
Even the working title speaks plays with linguistic
slapstick: »Landing« is on the one hand a
common architectural term and at the same
time it describes a bizarre event with a twist on
the meaning of the word.
On the other hand, the objects in »Gate« or
»Kitchen« tell complete dramas: The yellow
telephone next to the safety lock that was not
removed, because the murderer was not recognized;
the matches the fallen tyrant Saddam
Hussein used to warm his coffee in his rabbit
hole while a war raged outside.
The themes Demand has made use of are multilayered,
from an apparently coincidence to
trivial happenings to the unforgettably tragic.
Whether referring to political events or simply
owing to the beauty of nature, all of his artworks
never fail in their effect. He made a name
for himself with an annoying, beautiful forest
we saw in a photograph in which succulent,
deep green leaves were bathed in a bright early
morning light, a forest like the ones French
landscape painters once painted; and ambitious
wildlife journalist loved to portray. The perfect
forest that the Berlin artist pre sented in his five
meter wide monumental photograph, »Clearing«,
was a scenery made from paper that was
created with an very nearly monumental expenditure
of time and energy in his Berlin studio.
His assistants wrapped no less than 270,000
sheets of paper on the artificial branches for
months on end. The sun in this clearing, which
looks more beautiful than any forest imaginable,
shines from his studio lamps.

07
THOMAS DEMAND
Büro

08
MEMORY ON DISPLAY
The Paper Illusions of THOMAS DEMAND
REALIZATION
Gate
Grotto
In approaching Thomas Demand’s work cinematographically,
we will forgo juxtaposing his works of art with the original
locations. These »Before and After« effect would not do justice
to Demand’s own originals. This approach will be used right up
to or after the moment captured in Demand’s magnum opus.
In order to narrate the authentic as well as the personal backgrounds
of his staged photographs, these portraits must themselves
be set in the scene again to preserve the memory game
– even while being watched on a television monitor.
For this, his art should be taken up and distributed using artificial
and conceptional transposition on film. His »cleared up« images
are revived again in the background inasmuch as, for example,
his naturalistic works like »Stroh« (Straw), »Rasen« (Lawn), return
to nature to stage them there in front of waving corn fields
to clarify Demand’s fascination with the structure of nature.
Each take will always remain a mysterious moment – whether
we drive to Kufstein to the Hero Organ to get closer to Demand’s
explanation or to the accident at the English Fitzwilliam Museum
in order to provide the feeling of the original moment – the
alienated viewpoint will constantly be emphasized.
The exhibition at the Berlin National Gallery 2009/2010 provides
the framework for the film. The images shot there on the one
hand are remarkably suitable as short, recurring way stations and
on the other hand as entry and exit points for the various levels
of the film. By focusing on one of the images we begin to plunge
and dive in these stories and backgrounds.
Original music and archive material from previous exhibitions
compliment the search for the hidden agendas of Demand’s
»worlds«.

09
MEMORY ON DISPLAY
The Paper Illusions of THOMAS DEMAND
INFORMATION
Landing
A Film by Jeremy JP Fekete
CONTACT
Length: 26’ & 52”
Format: HD Cam
A production of LOOKS Filmproduktionen GmbH
in Coproduction with Radio Bremen
in Collaboration with ARTE.
Commissioning editor: Mechtild Lehning
C O N TA C T
LOOKS Filmproduktionen GmbH
Fehrbelliner Str. 93
10119 Berlin, Germany
Producer: Martina Haubrich
Phone: + 49.30.323060-12
Mobil: + 49.151.140 70556
E-mail: haubrich@looksfilm.tv
WWW.LOOKSFILM.TV