State of the Art of the State – a Dysfunctional Machine

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Deborah Uhde | 2016 | 11:52 min | HD | 16:9 | col | stereo | en

2020
(S) Alles auf Anfang, Ost-Passage Theater, Leipzig

2019
(S) Screening im Pögehaus Leipzig

2018
(S) Ace House Collective, Yogyakarta

2017
(S) Medienwerkstatt Hannover

2016
(S) Lampentotalverdampfung Wien
(S) Directors Lounge Z-Bar Berlin
(S) Screening @ International Film School Saigon, Ho-Chi-Minh-City
(G) Meisterschüler-Ausstellung, Raumlabor, Braunschweig

Deborah Uhde‘s piece „State of the Art of the State – a Dysfunctional Machine“ seems to be made of pieces of information about a space in a very different way. Views of a science campus, the „physikalisch-technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig“, are being combined on a double screen and edited in associative ways. The rhythm of the pictures is slow and seems to follow the pace of a documented research, the cataloguing and search for art on the campus as the subtitles state. However, we rarely get to see art, at least no paintings or sculptures but strange constellations of buildings, containers, rulers, marks and construction signs, any of which could be part of some art project but very unlikely is so. The one object that looks very much like a modernist sculpture, a steel object that combines spheres and poles, apparently is an object for measurement as the viewer is informed by subtitles. Deborah‘s film thus combines spatial views in a poetical and rhythmical way, but then it seems, she rather asks the viewer to critically engage and make their own distinctions between aesthetic and utilitarian spatial use.

Klaus Eisenlohr
Director´s Lounge