Wibmer creates an illusion and plays with the surreal. New meanings in her video result from alienation, decomposition and new-composition of movements and of the human body itself, which she manipulates visually by rearranging it in an unusual way. One and the same shot shows the body as a peculiar anatomy, i.e. parts with distorted proportions are joined together, and then don’t match anymore, or the head undergoes a weird physiognomical metamorphosis. She plays with roles, conditions and conditioning. The different forms of self-experience and self-consciousness are ironically presented. She becomes an object, that, depending on the visual angle, is deformed and becomes deviate because of the mirror-image - a distorted self-image aided by a distorting mirror. She takes on grotesquely varied shapes, or multiplies physical sections as witty intermezzi. All this is done in an exactly calculated balance between subtlety and naiveté. Her work springs from the directness and spontaneity of the making; during the shooting she observes her action simultaneously on a monitor, so she can react immediately to developments - an interaction between action and reaction. It is an absurd-realistic curiosity show, which demonstrates that everything depends on point of view. Her message is intensified through the music - an assembly of ironic musical quotations (national anthems, psychedelic functional music), of texts and voices, which establishes and counterpoints the variations in inner and outer personality-structures.
Katharina Wibmer succeeds in finding a new form of speech, which expresses feelings, opinions, and conditions in a subtle way, by using simple means. In 1996 Letzte Lockerung won the Video Art Award of Marl, Germany.
– Susanne Geiser
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Music Blixa Bargeld, FM Einheit, The Red Ravens, advice Joachim Fleischer, Thanks to Professor Jochen Kuhn/Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg
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