ELLEN BORNKESSEL | The StandingStills

Opening: Friday, 12 June 2009, 7 p.m.

Exhibition: 13 June - 4 July 2009

With hypnotic, almost motionless, images, the video installation sets off a maelstrom of dreamlike urban situations. The projections cover the entire wall so that the viewer is simultaneously part of the scenes and outside of them. Static night shots of houses, in which flickers of light suggest the presence of residents, appear air-tight and exemplary. Surreal street scenes are acted out on a second projection space, where people, like animals, sleep in trees or lie on cars. 

The “urban landscapes” Ellen Bornkessel creates and discovers parade a space in which the whole city appears to be dreaming, to be in a sleep that produces surprising, mysterious scenes beyond belief. Viewers are tempted to rub their eyes to check if they are awake or asleep. Those who engage in the pull of these images will feel a sense of “StandingStill”. An immobility from which a childlike, buoyant element strikes out. 

As in all her video works, Ellen Bornkessel leaves room for the accidental, which here, too, provides for an unusual turn of events. The boundary between documentation and fiction is dissolved in her work, leading to a reflection on reality. In addition, the work poses questions about the the individual’s possibility to act humanly within these “realities” and to create spaces. 

The pictures originated in cooperation with the dance ensemble pretty ugly tanz köln.