The videos by this artist are usually vague and undeniably 'artistic'. She works a lot with sound effects and psychedelic images that evoke associations with the days of bubbling light shows. And thus 'Wiener Blut' starts with artificially made sounds of eating. A 'flanger' makes the smacking sounds swirl in a sterile way while you watch slow motion images of a spoon disappearing into a mouth which is heavily made up. The perspective shifts when waltz music by Richard Strauss starts up and the setting becomes aristocratic. A man and a woman seem to be walking slowly towards each other in romantic rapture on the steps of a palace, but they walk just as slowly backwards. In other words, they do not reach each other. Drama. Step up, step down. The drama takes an ironic turn when the two, in total ecstasy, whirl and swing to the rhythm of the waltz. The man and woman turn out to be two women, in fierce competition over who looks most like Ophelia. Then in a bath with flowers we see close-ups of a woman withdrawn into herself and surrendering herself to the water. There is just a hint of slashed wrists. It is unclear whether both could only find their love by a double suicide or whether one of the lovers has sacrificed herself in this way. The closing shot is of their clothes drying in the wind on a washing line. 'Wiener Blut' is an ironic commentary on love and the impossibility of actually meeting one another.
– Willem van Weelden
|
Camera: Frank Werner, Sound: Stefan Zintel, Music: Johann Strauss, Editing: Christian Birk
Christa Werner–Geiselhofer ° 1967, Wenen (Oostenrijk)
Lives and works in Saarbrücken (Brd)
|
|
1 9 9 8 
