dortmunder u CENTRE FOR ART AND CREATIVITY

32
JOURNEY INTO THE U
FLYING PICTURES BY
ADOLF WINKELMANn
Anna Tüne
A FILM INSTALLATION
IN THREE STATIONS
FIRST STATION
U-TOWER PICTURE CLOCK
Film artist Adolf Winkelmann has transformed the
U-Tower into a picture clock, reminiscent of baroque
church towers with their ingenious moving mechanisms.
The digital revolution has meant that moving
pictures have long taken off from cinema and television,
and now fly freely from laptops to mobile phones and
around our cities. For the film-maker it was therefore
only a small intellectual step to his staging of the
old storage tower of the Dortmunder Union Brewery.
Winkelmann illuminates the tower’s unique rooftop
with film images. The observer looks into the building’s
interior as though through a gauze, which is more or
less transparent, depending on the weather, the season
and the light conditions, indeed different from minute
to minute. Winkelmann creates the sense of a space
behind the colonnades and fills it with life, with imaginary
water or with beer. Every hour on the hour it is
inhabited by large pigeons. As a secular church tower
the U-Tower is intended to give signs of light, signs
of life, sketch silhouettes of human motion onto the
sky above the Ruhr.
SECOND STATION
RUHR PANORAMAS IN THE ENTRANCE HALL
On eleven screens suspended above the visitors’ heads,
Winkelmann shows associatively assembled panoramas,
his map of the Ruhr Metropolis. It is a stream of
images of documentary views, taken in many locations
in the Ruhr area. The incredible precision, the almost
machine-perfect gliding of the panoramas is a carefully
and accurately created effect made possible by highly
specialized technology. Sometimes the camera eye
follows, with an unshakeable steadiness, the profiles
of façades made of stone, glass, plastic and plaster
around a narrow town square, unutterably and movingly
ordinary; sometimes it leads us to believe in its
freedom and scans the panorama of a slag heap, only
to be confronted with the feeling that it is precisely this
freedom that cannot be found; but always the precisely
created aesthetic of the chain of images confronts the
viewer with an undeniable experience of highly objective
reality. The grave material present is garishly illu mi -
nated. Nevertheless, the visitor is embraced by the
stream of pictures, which complement each other, fall
apart like the image in a kaleidoscope and then recreate
themselves in the next moment into great, moving
panoramas. The factuality of these outside worlds is
boosted into a hyper-reality which is difficult to repress.
THIRD STATION
NINE WINDOWS IN THE VERTICAL ART SPACE
The film staging continues in the stairwell, making
even a ride on the escalator an experience. The
installation invites the visitor to explore the museum
storeys or to have a look at the creative workshops.
Nine virtual image windows open up on the vertical
art space’s internal wall. They take the form of small
square holes in the concrete, facing outwards or
inwards, over three storeys. These image windows
are the stage setting for the people of the Ruhr, for
their attitude to life, their desire, their language. The
authenticity of this part of the installation rests
wholly on personal encounters with people who have
influenced Winkelmann’s life and world view; he is
involved here in an intimate sense: rigorously and
subjectively, even autobiographically, implicated. As
a film-maker he has, more than almost anyone, given
the Ruhr a new face while remaining affectionately
disposed towards its traditional character. He always
does this in a respectful way, while also playing with
individual clichés. He draws his figures – as clownesque
and creative, fit for everyday life but also drawn
towards the magic of the surreal, both difficult and
easy – with a completely unpretentious compassion.
Left: Nine Windows in the vertical art space
Right: U-Tower Picture Clock
Bottom: Ruhr Panoramas in the Entrance Hall
Photos: © Adolf Winkelmann
Created by Adolf Winkelmann
Script department: Jost Krüger
Camera: David Slama, Voxi Bärenklau
Sound compositions: Hans-Peter Kuhn,
Hans Steingen
Sound design: Matthias Lempert
Production: Christiane Schaefer
With: Dietmar Bär, Peter Fitz, Stephan Kampwirth,
Peter Lohmeyer, Jürgen Mikol, Caroline Peters,
Irene Rindje, Benjamin Sadler, Jürgen Schornagel,
Christian Tasche, Margret Völker,
Katharina Wackernagel, August Zirner
Winkelmann Filmproduktion GmbH for the
City of Dortmund © 2010