A Walking Shadow
2009/2011 Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28) The photographs for this series were produced in collaboration with German actor Rainer Sellien and Australian artist Maren Götzmann and are the result of a workshop with professional actors and performing artists that took place in January 2009 in Berlin. Based on concepts of theatricality and psychological imagination in the Baroque paintings of Rembrandt van Rijn and their link to the dramatic world of William Shakespeare each work was inspired by one of the three Shakespeare plays Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello. The work does not attempt to illustrate or re-tell the stories of Shakespeare’s plays. It is rather a visual response to certain aspects of his deep and multifaceted world that developed during the image taking and the editing afterwards: A Walking Shadow. Each work is displayed as a story board in a row of between 33 to 36 images for each play and the overall display measures between 10 and 11 meters. Alternatively the work can be exhibited as ‘fragments’ of two to four images. Each individual print measures 30 x 40 cm. Performers: Knut Berger, Anna de Carlo, Christoph Glaubacker, Katharina Linder, Michael Sideris (Hamlet); Magdalene Artelt, Niels Bormann, Andreas Nickl (Macbeth); Alexis Bug, Franziska Dieterich, Milena Dreißig, Gianni Meurer & Sebastian Suba (Othello). Special thanks to Nele Saworski |