Imaginative force in reduced form

Video installations of Willie Doherty in Munich, Kunstbau

A concert of voices of people busy with themselves, landscapes and close-ups of faces, lonely walkers in the night or in derelict areas: The films, slides and video projects of the Irish artist Willie Doherty utilize their minimalist images in the romance language of subjective camera and internal speech.

The Kunstbau of Lenbachhauses Munich Königsplatz presents eight such filmic installations together. Like the night walkers in the approximately 8-minute installation itself, the visitors can stroll along through a nightly space and interweave text fragments or ambient noises into their own thoughts. Some of the film installations of Doherty are definitely analytical. In „Same Difference“ (1990) the projected image shows repeatingly the same monotonous face of a harmless-looking woman who by word labels such as "volunteer", "Murderer", "wild" becomes a projection figure. The special style of the text that is sometimes sensationalistic, build an obvious contrast to the slide projection's visual monotony and simpleness.

In other films the reluctance of the visual, a limitation on the face and its movement in a uniform, urban landscape is used to rise and identify with the person. Especially in "Closure" the camera is moving next to the beautiful, though melancholy face of the actress - she orbits, in a way, the camera while her aphorisms oscillate between descriptions of a family situation and emotions. The type of image management and Off-Text with a kind of inner voice is similar in "Non-Specific Threat" (2004). In this sequence of images, the camera circles around the bald head of a middle aged man with a rather severe facial features and wearing jeans, with an Off-Text redrawing forecasts of various kinds: "I am everywhere. There will be no shopping. I am any color you want me to be“ (etc.).

In anderen Filmen wird die Zurückhaltung des Visuellen, die Beschränkung auf ein Gesicht und dessen Bewegung in einer einförmigen, städtischen Landschaft zur Überhöhung und Identifikation mit der Person verwendet. Insbesondere bei „Closure“ bewegt sich die Kamera neben der schönen, wenn auch melancholisch gestimmten Darstellerin her – diese umkreist in gewisser Weise die Kamera, während ihre Gedankensplitter zwischen Deskriptionen einer familiären Situation und Emotionen wechseln. Die Art der Bildführung und des Off-Textes einer quasi inneren Stimme findet sich ähnlich in „Non-Specific Threat“ (2004). In dieser Bildfolge umkreist die Kamera einen kahlköpfigen Mann mittleren Alters mit eher herben Gesichtszügen und in Jeans, wobei ein Off-Text Prognosen unterschiedlichster Art nachzeichnet: „I am everywhere. There will be no shopping. I am any color you want me to be“ (etc.).

Both the perceptible movement and deliberate camera, as well as the voices in the off and the striking faces of the films and video installations recur in their language on the music sector. Im Interview mit dem Kurator des Hamburger Kunstvereins, Yilmaz Dziewior, beschreibt Doherty seine Ursprünge aus der musikalischen Subkultur des Punk: In an interview with the curator Yilmaz Dziewior of the Hamburger art assembly, the artist Doherty describes its origins from the musical subculture of punk:

„"I was initially excited by the possibility of making art, which potency seems strikingly appearing to me, because the early punk music in the 1970s had an outgoing energy in a certain way belonging to my life. Punk meant for me at that time a change in the form of autonomous activity. I felt this attitude as liberating, and when I finally discovered the American Pop Art, I linked both. The way how these banal images of everyday life were used influenced me a lot."

Doherty, however, applies primarily, as the contributions of Francis McKee and Matthias Muehling in the catalog show, as an artist dealing with the political situation of his Irish homeland in a critical and differentiated consideration. „30 January 1972. The Only Good One is a Dead One“ of 1993 deals with the" Bloody Sunday ", in January 1972, when fourteen unarmed demonstrators were shot dead by British paratroopers. The three minute sound - and slide - installation reminds at the event with the help of eyewitness reports and snapshots. Archival materials such as a television report have been reworked so that images and sound are perceived separately, and the immediate impression of figures breaks down, so that the television's potentially inherent opinion is reduced to a subjective approach to history. Die dreiminütige Ton- und Diainstallation

The 35mm-Diaprojektion of 1991 shows just the face of a man, that is cut out of a newspaper, and still shows the pattern of its screening. Im Off wird ein Text gesprochen, der auf die gezeigte Person bezogen werden kann und sie so zu einer Art Repräsentanten eines poetischen Gedankenraumes werden lässt. In the Off a word is spoken to the person that can be obtained to him, who thus becomes a kind of represnetative of a space of poetic thoughts. The visitors can hear sentences like „Nowhere is the sea so clear and calm, and, with barely a moment's notice, the waves so dark and angry. I am solid“. Landscape descriptions and self-statements follow almost monotonous on each other.

In "Ghost Story" are in a reverse way people and landscape formally linked. The fifteen-minute video installation of the film combines a camera ride through a forest with other ambient recordings and landscape images. The Off-voice tells about people and past events. The landscape images allow to imagine these events in a real environment, and it gives the involved people new immediacy. Die The poetic force of this scaffolding, which includes the viewers and viewers and invites them to romantic reconstruction and subjective projection competes in a similar manner as "Closure" and "Non-Specific Threat" with the creative resources of experimental music videos, and the slower picture, reduced voice and text acoustics exhibits at the level of the imaginative a striking advantage.

Willie Doherty

until 06.01.2008

Kunstbau

Königsplatz/80333 München

Tue-Sun 10 am -18 pm

Guidance tours by curators and experts:

08.01.2007: Marcus Coelen, LMU München; 22.11.07 Petra Löffler, Universität Regensburg; 13.12.07 Matthias Mühling.

Catalog:

Willie Doherty. Anthologie zeitbasierter Arbeiten. Hrsg. v. Yilmaz Dziewior und Matthias Mühling. Mit Beiträgen von Yilmaz Dziewior, Francis McKee, Matthias Mühling. Kunstverein in Hamburg, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2007. 171 Seiten, 188 Abbildungen. Paperback, 978-3-7757-1929-2.

Report Dr. Ulrike Ritter
Photos: Kunstbau Lenbachhaus and the artist

Read this article's german version at www.kunst-spektrum.de/html/journal.html