Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Repetition is a two-folded concept: Something is projected into the future - as when we repeat and rehearse before a performance – but is also retrospective – as when we repeat what has already been. This fundamental ambiguity is one of the guiding priciples of the art of Kerstin Cmelka, Austrian filmmaker and artist, foremost working in Berlin. In short films, in installations and performances she has refined the concept of repetition: from double exposures and iterative patterns in her early films to the re-enactments of film scenes and classical street performances in the past few years, most notably in a series of micro dramas, ”Mikrodramen”. The concept of repetition and doubling is obviously also important in her contribution to the volume I, Coleoptile, which consists of poetry by Ann Cotten, and photographs staged by Cmelka. The photos are stills from a re-enactment – or repetition – of the Russian silent film Baryshna i khuligan [”The Young Woman and the Hooligan”] from 1918, directed by Yevgeni Slavinsky. The remarkable thing with the original film is that futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky has one of the leading roles, as a hooligan who falls in love with his female teacher. The stills by Cmelka, where she and Cotten act together, form an integrated part of the book, corresponding to Cotten’s poems, where several narrative or rather thematic lines correspond to each other, primarly the story of Enzo, a boy or young man, but also a story or cluster of poems concerning traveling, love and violence.
Repository Citation
Andersson, Lars G.. "Review of I, Coleoptile, by Ann Cotten and Kerstin Cmelka." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 11, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1–4. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol11/iss1/12