The Rehearsal of Refusal
Clemens von Wedemeyer peers
behind the scenes of the political establishment
What
happens when the winner of an election doesn't accept the election? Is a
politician's capitulation meant seriously, or is it mere strategy? Clemens
von Wedemeyer poses these questions in his new film "The Rehearsal," on
show in the exhibition "Freisteller"
at the Deutsche
Guggenheim. The artist stages his plot on the political backstage. Daniel
Völzke followed him there-and discovered a few parallels to
real-life models.
Clemens
von Wedemeyer, Die Probe (video still), 2008,
©
Clemens von Wedemeyer
The two men look at
each other, and for a moment it seems as if they are about to lose their
composure and burst into boisterous laughter-the elected president and his
speechwriter in an unobserved moment, shortly after a landslide election
victory. The Rehearsal, a film by Clemens
von Wedemeyer currently on show in the exhibition Freisteller,
takes place on the political backstage-where pretty much everything is
possible, at least according to the little guy. Including the possibility
that highly distinguished politicians actually ridicule the people they
are supposed to represent.
Clemens
von Wedemeyer, Villa Romana 2008
Photo
© Gregor Hohenberg
Clemens von
Wedemeyer, born in 1974, is interested in spaces concealed in the blind
spots of everyday life and media attention. In his films, bureaucratic
randomness is portrayed as a mysterious ritual, as in Otjesd
(2005), for instance, or the swaggering ambition of city planners and life
managers is measured up against urban reality, as in Silberhöhe
from 2003. Von Wedemeyer's contribution to last year's skulptur
projekte in Münster attracted considerable attention. The filmmaker
used the Metropolis, a run-down movie cinema in a railroad station,
as a service station and reference point for travelers and exhibition
visitors.
Clemens
von Wedemeyer, From the opposite side, 2007,
Metropolis
Cinema, skulptur projekte münster 07,
Photo
Mühlhoff/Vossiek
At the same time, the
cinema was used as a projection room for his docu-fiction Von
gegenüber/From the opposite side, which examines life in the
quarter surrounding the station. Von Wedemeyer combined hidden-camera
footage with staged scenes using actors filmed inside the station. Roles
were switched, actors became passers-by, and secretly filmed passers-by
became actors; a member of a homeless project played a police officer on
duty at the station. The work, presented as an endless loop, associates
the station as well as the cinema with the disappearance of public space,
linking the medium of film with sculpture and installation.
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Clemens von Wedemeyer, From the opposite
side (video still), 2007,
©
Clemens von Wedemeyer
courtesy
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris
Clemens von
Wedemeyer was born in Göttingen and studied at the Hochschule
für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, where the media arts
department was set up with much ado in the 1990s. Subsequently, however,
the neglected painters there stormed the art market. It was fine arts that
von Wedemeyer studied here, not media art, but it's entirely possible that
a student in a constellation of this kind thinks about the materials
available to him in a more discerning way. On this, von Wedemeyer says: "I
try to adopt the medium of cinema or film on my own, and I can't
completely forget the framework of a medium I mistrust."
Clemens
von Wedemeyer, From the opposite side (video still), 2007,
©
Clemens von Wedemeyer
courtesy
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris
This
mistrust is fundamental to his work. To his mind, backstage is a place of
doubt. We are familiar with this peek backstage from countless "making
ofs" documenting how films are made. Yet while von Wedemeyer also
occasionally produces "making ofs," to his films, he gives almost the same
importance to the production's documentation turns out to be as to the
actual film. This process, which contains echoes of Brecht's
concept of epic theater,
shows the film as something made, as a media reality that could just as
well look different or impart another mood, another tendency, another aim.
In
the twelve-minute film The Rehearsal, von Wedemeyer's latest work, it's
not merely the media apparatus that is exposed. Hectic camera people,
tough PR consultants, catchy sayings revolving around the celebration of
an election victory: even while the artist quotes the hard-core
media-political satire genre for several minutes, The Rehearsal primarily
concentrates on the quieter moments after the TV teams have disappeared.
From a fixed perspective, we observe as though through an invisible
surveillance camera moments of stillness, seconds capable of containing
utopia or at least more dialectic, delicacy, and complexity.
Clemens
von Wedemeyer, The Text (video still), 2008,
©
Clemens von Wedemeyer
Clemens
von Wedemeyer, The Text (video still), 2008,
©
Clemens von Wedemeyer
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