November 2011, arsenal cinema

Ulrike Ottinger

PRATER, 2007

This autumn in Berlin continues to be all about Ulrike Ottinger. Following the Floating Food exhibition (which continues until the end of October) at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) will be showing her unknown early paintings (1963–68), which have never previously been exhibited, to coincide with Ottinger receiving the Hannah Höch Prize (November 26 – January 22). Until January, Arsenal will be inviting audiences to discover the cinematic oeuvre of Ulrike Ottinger in a series of twelve events that includes introductions and discussions. By drawing upon themes, quotes, images and sounds from the exhibitions, the film series reflects and passes comment on the complex nature of Ulrike Ottinger's world of moving images – a world where opulence, stylization, theatrical and ethnographic variations, cultural history, science fiction, reflection and travel all meet.

The first of the four programs to be shown in November comprises her short films. SUPERBIA – DER STOLZ (West Germany 1986), Ottinger's contribution to the portmanteau film Sieben Frauen – Sieben Sünden, is dedicated to the first in the canon of the seven deadly sins. In USINIMAGE (West Germany 1987), documentary film sequences of Berlin's industrial architecture and cityscapes are edited together with scenes from Ottinger's Berlin trilogy. In the grotesque DAS EXEMPLAR (Germany 2002), a tsarist official of importance level twelve - the boring square - finds himself back in the Soviet Union. STILL MOVING (Germany 2009): "At a place both near and far, things live on due to their place in memory and the meaning given to them by humans. My pool of objects is by no means inferior to the pool of my memory, which is equally real. They stimulate each another at the same time and continually bring new and unexpected ideas to light." (Ulrike Ottinger) (November 6)

TAIGA (Germany 1992, November 13) "describes a journey to the yak and reindeer nomads in the northern part of Mongolia. The film leads us into the vastness of this high valley crowned by snow-coved peaks. The shamans are still powerful here and do not just accompany their wards in times of sickness or to their winter and summer camps but also on the transition into modern life. The dramatic structure doesn’t just follow the journey to these two different peoples, but also, with their help, the journey to their own history. They present themselves by staging their own daily lives, their celebrations and their religious rites." (Ulrike Ottinger)

ZWÖLF STÜHLE (Germany 2004, November 20) connects the dramatic structure of a search for treasure and chase with a dense visual world of people and places. The film tells simultaneously of yesterday and today, of the reality of people living in the CIS states and of the universally human component of our own actions.

PRATER (Germany / Austria 2007, November 27, followed by a discussion between Ulrike Ottinger and Nora Alter) The story of the oldest amusement park in the world is told in a series of miniature scenes consisting of conversation with show people, visitor impressions, film quotes, documents, observations and stagings.