IM GARTEN / 2010

HD Video, single channel, aspect ratio 16:9, color, sound, 12 min 50 sec, German, English subtitles

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IM GARTEN / 2010

The interview forms both the starting point and the staging ground for much of Lena Maria Thüring’s recent filmic work. Her films and videos explore how individuals forge their identities and shield their memories in the shadow of larger group dynamics and the socio-political systems in which they are cast, using personal narrative—its gaps and elisions, its specificity and opacity—to reveal how meaning is constructed, projected, protected, and perhaps deconstructed. At once documents and dreams, nonfiction and fantasia, the stories the artist coaxes forth from her subjects describe how individual desire forms to and flees from the systems in which it grows. In the single-channel video This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land (2012), for example, Thüring asked actors to deliver a political stump speech, those election-time monologues that outline the candidate’s resumes and dreams and promises. Here, though, the speeches were delivered from a recording studio in Hollywood, and the texts themselves were taken from the popular songs that American presidential candidates have used in recent election campaigns. Thus the disparity between the lyrics—from the titular folk song, “This Land Is Your Land” to Bruce Springsteen’s antiestablishment classic “Born in the USA”—and the candidates and political platforms they are supposed to reflect and champion come into strange, alienating focus.
This movement between the individual and the community, the story-telling figure and the larger society to which they speak and belong, is also traced in the earlier video Im Garten (In the Garden, 2010). In it, a long tracking shot carefully combs and surveys the trees and bushes of a shadow-strewn garden, through which only the wind and the camera move. Against the strange suspense of this uneasy pastoral scene, a cast of actors speak in voiceover about their feelings about the garden, their neighbors, and the village in which they apparently live. The work evokes both literary and cinematic inspirations like Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and Michael Haneke; yet as issues of surveillance, society, and the natural landscape seem to be the subtext to the banal sentiments and statements that issue from the actors’ mouths, the spectator is left to wonder about the artist behind the camera, and her own oblique, shadowy intentions. Whether offering fixed-camera portraits or the roving area of a garden, Thüring’s frame is almost exclusively trained on dark, sumptuous grounds, from which her subjects (people, trees) come into sharp-contrast focus. The clarity of her high-definition camera reflects the straightforwardness of her process, while the noir-ish lighting of many of her shots hints at the deeper shadows of revelation she appears to be subtly and steadily trying to unearth.

Quinn Latimer, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, CH

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IM GARTEN / 2010

Der Blick folgt der langsamen Kamerafahrt durch einen Sommergarten. Vor einem Scheunentor hält sie kurz inne, schwenkt ab, fährt erneut den schmalen Wegen entlang an einheimischen Pflanzen und Büschen vorbei. Der Garten, üppig und grün, erscheint gepflegt. Das Haus zum Garten bleibt der eigenen Vorstellung überlassen. Die Zuschauerin, der Zuschauer taucht in einen Mikrokosmos ein, der sich einer genauen Verortung bewusst entzieht. Lena Maria Thüring lässt in “Im Garten” die aufgebaute Spannung als präzise orchestrierte, multimediale Inszenierung ins Leere laufen: Die Geschichte nimmt keine Wendung, vielmehr wird sie aus verschiedenen Perspektiven erzählt und entfaltet gerade darin eine Präsenz, die über sich hinausweist.
Die Künstlerin erzählt in ihrer atmosphärisch dichten Videoinstallation – anhand von Aufnahmen eines blühenden Gartens und von verschiedenen Stimmen vorgetragenen Monologen – eine Geschichte von Argwohn und Missgunst im Dorf. Die Erzählenden, seit vielen Jahren Nachbarn, reden über ihr beständiges Schweigen.
Lena Maria Thüring recherchiert und führt zahlreiche Interviews. Dabei interessiert sich die Künstlerin für die scheinbar nebensächlichen Details einer Geschichte, die Lücken und Widersprüche. Sie ordnet das gesammelte Material, verdichtet und verfremdet es als eigenständige Autorin. Akribisch seziert die Künstlerin die fiktive Geschichte eines latent schwelenden Konflikts und legt fast exemplarisch in der hochartifiziellen Anlage von Bild- und Textebene die innere Struktur des engen sozialen Gefüges im Dorf frei.

Madeleine Emmenegger, Kunsthaus Langenthal, 2010

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With: Oriana Schrage, Ingo Ospelt, Oliver Krättli, Claudine Rajchman, Anna-Katharina Müller, Matthias Walter, Tiziana Jelmini, Utz Bodamer

Concept, Book, Director: Lena Maria Thüring
Copyediting: Sibylle Berg
Camera: Lukas Franz
Camera Assistance: Thomas Karrer
Sound: Fred Herrmann
Audio Mixing: Fred Herrmann
Editing: Lena Maria Thüring

Thanks to:
Catherine Aguilar, Annette Amberg, Seline Baumgartner, Sibylle Berg, Christof Bieli, Utz Bodamer, Madeleine Emmenegger, Fanni Fetzer, Lukas Franzl, Fred Herrmann, Tiziana Jelmini, Thomas Karrer, Oliver Krättli, Quinn Latimer, Anna-Katharina Müller, Ingo Ospelt, Claudine Rajchman, Oriana Schrage, Verena Thüring, Matthias Walter, Paolo Zanetta.

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Mit: Oriana Schrage, Ingo Ospelt, Oliver Krättli, Claudine Rajchman, Anna-Katharina Müller, Matthias Walter, Tiziana Jelmini, Utz Bodamer

Konzept, Text, Regie: Lena Maria Thüring
Text Lektorat: Sibylle Berg
Kamera: Lukas Franz
Kamerassistenz: Thomas Karrer
Ton: Fred Herrmann
Audiomix: Fred Herrmann
Schnitt: Lena Maria Thüring

Dank an:
Catherine Aguilar, Annette Amberg, Seline Baumgartner, Sibylle Berg, Christof Bieli, Utz Bodamer, Madeleine Emmenegger, Fanni Fetzer, Lukas Franzl, Fred Herrmann, Tiziana Jelmini, Thomas Karrer, Oliver Krättli, Quinn Latimer, Anna-Katharina Müller, Ingo Ospelt, Claudine Rajchman, Oriana Schrage, Verena Thüring, Matthias Walter, Paolo Zanetta.