Ana Torf’s Anatomy at daadgalerie
She opens new windows on events we think we know about and reveals them in a surprisingly topical light. In her work she focuses, among others, on the relationship between text and image, reading and visualization. During her scholarship as a DAAD artist-in-residence in 2005 Ana Torfs researched in Freiburg Military Archive on a trial held in May 1919, the "Case of the Murder of Dr. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg before the Military Field Tribunal of the Cavalry Guard Rifle Division in the Main Courtroom at the Berlin Criminal Court". Ana Torfs pinpointed selected statements from this trial to compose "A Tragedy in Two Acts," the literary script for her project. She gave the project the ambiguous title ANATOMY.
The artist chose 25 young Berlin actors to re-enact specific testimonies from the record of the proceedings, and filmed their performances on video. Another 17 actors of different ages, including Therese Affolter, Judith Engel, Stefan Lisewski and Matthias Matschke, posed for the artist for black-and-white slide photographs. She chose to set the scene in the demonstration room of the Anatomical Theatre in Berlin, built from 1789-1790 by the architect Carl Gotthard Langhans, whose most famous building is the Brandenburg Gate. The result is an installation that interlinks big-screen slide projections with video images on two monitors. The actors recite the testimonies in German. Over wireless headphones the visitor hears an English version spoken by an interpreter - another language in two senses of the word. ANATOMY dissects both language and content. More on Ana Torf Anna Torf web project "Approximations/Contradictions" www.diaart.org/torfs or www.sonambiente.org. DAAD Berlin
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