Anja Dornieden
2021Wolkenschatten
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
Linn Löffler
Hypnotising slideshow of weathered images presents itself as a relic of an imposing event. A village's inhabitants flee into the darkness of a cave to refresh themselves with projected images. Ultimately, they will pay a high price for their wonderment.
Cloud Shadows
Comfort Stations
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
Comfort Stations consists of a found set of images and sounds with an instruction text making up some sort of psychological test. Participants should open themselves to experiencing the events with all of their senses. Feel free to participate but please remember to treat these experiences with caution.
Comfort Stations
The Masked Monkeys
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
The masked arts of Indonesia are thousands of years old. They are commonly referred to as wayang topeng (wayang: shadow or puppet; topeng: mask). It is believed that wayang topeng originated from tribal death rites, where masked dancers were considered the interpreters of the gods. In the lowest rungs of Javanese society a unique manifestation of these masked traditions can be found. Its practitioners are performers, but they are not merely entertainers. Their aim is not simply to amuse. Their ambition is to be respected, to be honoured, to be successful. They have embarked on a path they know will lead to a higher state, to an honourable and noble position.
The Masked Monkeys
Eigenheim
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
In the German Democratic Republic children played with dollhouses made to resemble the type of life they would one day grow up to have. Now many of these houses can be found for sale on eBay or in collectors’ hands. The dollhouses that survive do so as idealized images of a time and place that no longer exists. Through the words of their past and new owners, Eigenheim looks at the people and memories that once dwelled in these spaces to explore the remnants of a lost world.
Eigenheim
Her Name Was Europa
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
The aurochs were a breed of wild cattle indigenous to Europe, North Africa, and Asia. Extinct since the early 17th century, these majestic, horned beasts have long held a mythological status, believed to embody supernatural powers. In the early 20th century, German scientists began a series of attempts to resurrect the species under the auspices of the Nazi regime; such experiments continue today in various forms. Berlin-based filmmakers Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy use this history to fashion a poetic and deadpan 16mm work of fanciful nonfiction that calls attention to itself as a constructed version of a strange reality.
Her Name Was Europa
Come and dance with me.
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
An abridged history of motion pictures: In 1888 George Eastman registered the made up word “Kodak” as a trademark. In 1894 Jean Aimé “Acme” Le Roy presented the first film screening in New York City. In 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumière filmed workers leaving their factory in Lyon. In 1903 Thomas Alva Edison orchestrated and captured on film the electrocution of an elephant in Coney Island. In 2011 Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy filmed dwarfs dancing on a stage at an amusement park in China. In 2012 Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy.
Come and dance with me.
New Museum of Mankind
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
Live performance with 16mm projectors (a traumatoscopic presentation). In the museum a world of possibilities presents itself to the open and focused mind. An immense number of scenes can be created to appease even the wildest of imaginations. With the help of the Traumatoscope the following test will guide you through the most common scenarios you will encounter and give you the tools you will need to persevere in your mission to create a new museum of mankind.
New Museum of Mankind
The Handeye: Bone Ghosts
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
Early 1900s, Robert Musil invites Freud to summon the ghost of Franz Mesmer, discoverer of animal magnetism and forefather of hypnosis. Musil told Freud about a series of dreams, in which a talking flea foretold of impending catastrophes all over Europe, which he wanted to question Mesmer about. It is said that Mesmer obligingly appeared & spoke in a repetitive & oblique manner which was transcribed by Freud in several scraps of paper & hidden separately in a series of objects that would end up in the collections of three Viennese museums. Legend has it that he who could piece together the text would find instructions for the assembly of a film. We visited these museums &, unable to break away the objects from their glass prisons, have made an attempt to reconstruct the film, hoping that the magnetic force inside the objects would transfer to the film’s silver halide crystals, therefore allowing us to make sense of the single written testimony leftover from the séance.
The Handeye: Bone Ghosts
A Flea’s Skin Would Be Too Big For You
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
In the summer of 2009, a new theme park was inaugurated in China. It was called „The Kingdom of the Dwarves“. From all over China recruits were brought in to live in the park and entertain its visitors. There were only two stipulated requirements for employment: the performers had to be between 18 and 40 years old and be shorter than 130 cm. Twice a day they take the stage singing and dancing for the paying crowd. “A flea’s skin would be too big for you” was an epigram used by the Romans to address a dwarf, at the period of the decadence.
A Flea’s Skin Would Be Too Big For You
Heliopolis Heliopolis
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
Heliopolis Heliopolis was the name of a metropolitan simulacrum devised as a training tool for urban planning at the NoUn School of Architecture in Egypt in the 3rd century BC. Heliopolis Heliopolis was created by an insurgent priest (whose name has been lost) as a tool to train students in the design of a revolutionary city meant to surpass the ancient city of Heliopolis. This in spite of the fact that the priest and his students appear never to have visited Heliopolis and based their model exclusively on texts and secondhand knowledge. Eventually this became a source of pride within the school and descriptions of Heliopolis gained a fantastical nature, becoming both meticulously elaborate and wildly implausible. Heliopolis Heliopolis is a cinematic interpretation of the simulacrum and the hypnotic, trance-inducing ritual connected to its use.
Heliopolis Heliopolis
Now I Want to Laugh
Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
Live performance with 16mm projectors. This is a simulation of a prototype for a “feeling machine” envisioned by Dr. D. Forme in 1917. This simulation is based on a short description and diagram found in the doctor’s notebooks. The description focuses on only one section of the machine. Brief mentions of the other sections were included but no detailed information was discovered. The machine was never built, yet according to the description its purpose was “to replace the faulty mechanism of human emotion”.
Now I Want to Laugh
