Photo Series: "Persian Miniature vs. GDR Aesthetics" - excerpts

From my recent work with photographer Franziska Burkhardt a.k.a. Wald Füchsin.
This is a rather long post. Please feel encouraged to scroll down....

„PERSIAN MINIATURE vs. GDR“

Beauty as a reflection of the divine, the search for the light of Paradise and the perpetual oscillation between the joy of the here and now as well as the longing for dissolution in the infinite are characteristic of the poetic impetus of Persian art.

In order to underline this costumes and poses of Persian book illustration ("miniatures") were put into the surreal environments of industrial wasteland and GDR architecture.

The incongrousness between the model and the surroundings creates universal aesthetics beyond the alledged borders between Orient and Occident. The dancer tests and eventually transcends cultural, political and religious boundaries in the intuitive physical experience of dance.

From the 16 principles of urbanism, passed by the governement of the German Democratic Republic on July 27, 1950:

"Cities do no develop and exist 'per se'. Cities are predominantly build by the industry and for the industry."

The dancer, in contrast to the architecture, is not limited by space and time, but dissolves and re-creates it in the movement.

Architecture is history in itself, while the dancer is its thrown-into-existance equivalent. The myth of dance exists in its nature beyond history. Each conscious movement dwelling from emotion and artistic activity leads finally to a collision of history and myth, where art comes to existence and creativity and creation coincide.

"The growth of the city needs to be subordinated to the principle of utility and has to respect certain boundaries."

The city posseses space and spirit, and dance is spirit and space.

The city has a topography and a building which remains solidly in one place. It needs history and political change to wander around. The buildings, once firmly anchored in the GDR, have been transported by the stream of history, have changed their place in time and exist now in a different country.

The dancer, on the other side, takes her cultural and personal biography and unfolds it like a garden into the free areas and spaces, as if the Other did not exist.

"It is impossible to transform the city into a garden."

The materialist essence of Marxism understands culture as created and not as something which has developed. The creation of culture which denies nature and time has transformed into a garden of delights and mystical reveries. Like dance by itself grass breaks through the concrete and conquers Time and Truth. In this process the building is torn down and rebuilt by a dancer.