Jakob Wassermann - German and Jew
Three-channel Film Installation, 55 min. HD
Created for the Jewish Museum Franken, Fürth
To mark the 150th birthday of Jakob Wassermann (1873, Fürth), Arnold Dreyblatt has created an installation that focuses on Wassermann‘s autobiographical work, My Path as a German and a Jew (1921). Dreyblatt invited eleven people of different backgrounds and ages to read from pre-selected sections of Wasserman‘s forensic analysis of German-Jewish relations - the result is a 55-minute scored three-channel film installation.
Video Edition, 4K Color Video, Stereo Sound, 20”37”.
Shown as part of the solo exhibition: “Warm-Up”, Yellow Solo Project Space, Berlin, 2021. Curated by Hajnal Nemeth.
Conductor, Score Transcription: Paul Brody
Eye-Tracking Realization: Dr. Markus Schönberger, iMotions A/S, Copenhagen Denmark
Camera: Veit Lup – Martin Wolff
In 1947, Edgard Varèse composed five-minutes of unfinished fragments for orchestra titled “Tuning Up”, referring to the tuning and preparatory ritual of every live orchestra performance in which musicians gather on the concert stage before the actual concert program begins. The static yet continually changing dynamic timbre of the orchestra warm-up is often overlooked.
In reflecting on Dreyblatt’s forty-year career in musical minimalism and media art, the classical preparatory ritual of the orchestra “warm-up” is examined in a video and audio installation. Archival recordings of over fifty orchestra warm-up sessions have been edited digitally into a seamless composition in which the short durations of these pre-concert moments are prolonged. The resulting digital recording was then transcribed and notated as a musical score for orchestra. The gaze of the orchestra conductor in performance has been mapped in real-time using eye-tracking software and wearable capture tools.
The production of “Warm Up” was supported by: Recherchestipendien im Bereich Bildende Kunst Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Abteilung Kultur, Berlin, 2020
Special Thanks to: iMotions A/S, Copenhagen Denmark
Video Edition, 01/03 + 1 AP, SD Video, B & W, 4:3 Format, Stereo Sound, 42:49 min.
Dreyblatt began his research into the cognitive phenomenon of the “Resting State” during a residency at the Center for Arts, Science and Technology at MIT in 2014-15. Cognitive scientists are exploring those forms of information processing that occur when the brain is not involved in the accomplishment of specific tasks and when there is little or no outside stimuli. Subjects are exposed to a low-stimulus environment in which light and sound signals are employed, interrupting introspection at random intervals with verbal and visual cues.
In “The Resting State”, Dreyblatt focuses on the methods with which researchers attempt to document and test this essential aspect of consciousness while at the same time turning the recipient into a test subject.
In “The Resting State”, archival film excerpts depicting neurological and psychological testing from the 1930s to the 1960s, experiential reports by test subjects and queries by researchers quoted in the image and sound track question the central role that visualization and language play in our understanding of internal mental states.
Two Channel Video Installation, SD Video, B & W and Color, 4:3 Format, Stereo Sound, 21:53 and 22:54, Loops
Exhibited and concieved for the exhibition:
“Artistic interventions in the new exhibition: "In the wake of the SS: images, voices and clichés: SS-Guards of the Women's Concentration Camp Ravensbrück”, 2020
Video 1: 21 :53 min, 2020; German with English subtitles
Video 2: 22:54 min, 2020; German with English subtitles
Speakers: Yvette Goetze-Hannemann, Sabine Kotzur
Recording: Zeitzeugen TV, Berlin; James Wehse, camera and editing; technical advice: Martin Wolff; Text translation: David Haney ; Transcription: Anne Steinhagen
Supported by German Federal Cultural Foundation
Arnold Dreyblatt has developed a two-part film installation: Two female speakers, who address the audience directly, give advice on how mothers should raise their children and how women should behave in National Socialist society.
At the center of this artistic exploration is authoritarian education under National Socialism. The quotations used in the first work are taken from contemporary books and magazines of the 1930s, such as the NS Women's Watch and several other guidebooks that were supported by Nazi propaganda and that pointed the way ahead for the educational methods of the Nazi national community.
The question of the after-effects of such methods after 1945 forms the core of the second work - using the example of Johanna Haarer's guidebook on infant care: “The German mother and her first child”. Published in 1934, the book became the basis for the "mother training courses" of the Nazi leadership. Until the 1970s, Haarer's book, in a version cleansed of National Socialist propaganda, was found in almost every household in the Federal Republic.
Video Projection 16:9 Size Variable; Silent; 28:36; Loop
Created for the exhibition “Lapse” as part of the Lux series at Museolaboratorio Ex Manifattura Tabacchi, Citta’ Sant’Angelo (PE) Italy, September 1 to September 30, 2018.
For the exhibition, Dreyblatt created a new video work “Screen Memory” (2017) to correspond with six of his early analog video which were also shown.
Gentle wind subtly creates Moiré patterns in a screen window.
Multi Monitor DVD display; 2003
One perceives an endless text dynamically fluttering on miniature black monitor. The downward flow of text from top to bottom of the screen is interrupted continually by a lateral left-right movement, resulting in an instability, and a degree of illegibility. The text is derived from textual fragments which have been collected from the card catalog of the Jewish Museum Archive in Berlin. The archive contains objects which have been donated to the Collection before the current location. The texts describe the condition of the donated objects and documents.
The work has been displayed in two forms on two occasions:
Galerie Anselm Dreher, 2003: Three miniature TFT displays hung on a wall in a dark room.
Jewish Museum Frankfurt, 2005: The work was situated in the section of the Museum in the Judengasse in Frankfurt, where an archaeological site may be entered. The monitor is positioned inside a deep brick well, and is only viewable from a specific standpoint near the entrance.
Black Plexiglass, Rear Projection, DVD, 10 min., loop, 1999
Source materials: Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, Berlin. Image generated on a motorized microfilm machine.
Monochrome rear projection on black plexiglass of microfilmed archival documents, lateral endless movement from left to right. The documents, which are the results of interrogations with German soldiers at the end of World War II, are only vaguely readable in the installation.
First presented as part of "From the Archives", solo exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, 1999.
3 screen projection, DVD, 17 min., loop, 1996
Documentation of an abandoned Salt Mine in Colorado with storage space equivalent to 43 football fields, the dedication of the first documented Time Capsule, and a robotic mass storage system.
First presented at the Arken Museum of Modern Art as part of the interactive performance-installation, "Memory Arena" in 1996.
Original Marerial VHS, DVD, 6 min., loop, 1992
A robotic mass storage system in which files are ordered and physically moved by a robotic monk/librarian. The machine periodically self-destructs.
First presented as part of the solo exhibition: "T: from the Great and Small Archive", Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1992
Analog Videotapes, 1/2 inch
Collection of the Donnell Library, New York; Anthology Film Archives, New York; The Vasulkas Archive, Santa Fe, New Mexico: ZKM Karlsruhe
Created at the Center for Media Studies, State University and Media Studies Center, Buffalo, New York, Center for Media Studies in 1974 and digitized in 2017 at ZKM, Karlsruhe.
This collection was part of the exhibition. “Lapse”, 2018 at the Museolaboratorio Ex Manifattura Tabacchi, Citta’ Sant’Angelo (PE), Italy
Screenings: Media Study Buffalo, 1973, Anthology Film Archives, 1974
1. "Lapse", 9:10, Loop
Stroboscopic Color Interference Patters
Superimposed over a Moiré pattern created by superimposed scan lines; analogue color burst signals beat against each other. The resulting stroboscopic pulsing stimulates apparent color fields, as the beating displays red, green and blue faster than the perception of the naked eye.
Electronic Soundtrack
2. "Baby Essentials", 6:51
Analogue Video Camera, Video Feedback and flickering Color
Electronic Soundtrack
3. "Burst", 8;02, Loop
Beating Stroboscopic Color Interference Patters
Animated Bhuddist scuptures.
Electronic Soundtrack
4. "Fluctuations", 7:30, Loop
Analogue Video Camera, Digital switcher, Found Objects
Electronic Soundtrack
5. "Uranus", 12:16, Loop
Created using a video feedback loop and frequency modulation. The flickering white light infers the appearance of color.
Electronic Soundtrack
6. "Carbon", 11:24, Loop
Analog Video Camera, Found Objects, Feedback Loop, Rutt-Etra Analog Video Synthesizer
Electronic Soundtrack
7. "Coordinates", 6:50, Loop
Analog Video Camera, Turntable with Objects, Chroma Keying, Feedback Loop
Electronic Soundtrack
Animated 16mm film and Electronic audio tape
Animation of 1000 multi-armed Tibetan Figures composed by Loan-Ska at the time of the Emperor Ch'ien Lung (1736-1796 A. D.)
Audio produced at the Electronic Music Studio at S.U.N.Y. Albany, New York. Audiotape has been lost.
