Ableugnen / Abschied / Ahnung der Vergangenheit / Allein / Alt werden / Anblick / Angst / Ansammlung / arglos, nicht schuldlos / Arroganz / Atemluft / Aufarbeitung / Aufgabe der … denkbar / Denkmal / deutsche Märchen / distanzieren … Entfremdung / Entsagung / Erbschaft / erdrücken / Erinnerungslosikeit … Flucht / Folter / Form werden / Fortschritt / Fragen stellen / Frauen / Freiheit spüren / Fremde erfahren / Fremder sein / Gas / Gedanke … Katastrophe / Kindheit / Kirchen besuchen / Klarheit suchen / Konstellation / Kontrollverlußt / Kopf leeren / körperlos / Kraft der Wahrheit / Lachhaft / … Öffentlichkeit / Ordnungskonzept / Philosophieren / Photoapparat / Politik / Privileg / Quälen … Stillschweigen / Stillstand / Studienreise / Stummheit / Symbol …Transport / Trauer / Träumt mich Zeit / Trümmerfrauen …Unbehagen / undenkbar / …Ursprung / Vater / Verantwortung / Verbindungslinien / Verblichen / Verborgene Schuld / verbrecherische Führung / Verdacht / verdrängen … Vorträge halten / Wachhalten / Wahnsinn / Wahrhaftigkeit … Wolkenmeere / Worte / zärtlich / Zeit / zerfließen / Zerstörung / Ziel … Zwangsvorstellungen / Zwiesprache.
excerpt voice over German
A balanced soul / agonize / air to breathe / alone / among us / annihilation / anywhere / appall / army of the dead / arrogance … billowing sea / bland / blind spots / bourgeois utopia / bus ride / camera / camp / captivated / captivity / catastrophe … closing eyes / collection / colloquy / coming to terms / compatriots … denial / deny / desperation / destination / destruction / discomfort / discovered guilt / disembodied … emigrant / emptiness / emptying / engraving / entrust / eradicate / escape / essential / estrangement … fragmented / gas / generational conflict / German fairy tales / getting tired / ghetto / glimpse of an eye … inevitable / inheritance / inhibition / inhumane / injustice / inner self / inner solitude / insatiable thirst / insufferably slow … maintained silence / massacre / master / me / memorial / million fold / minutes pass / mirror / misty rain … / represent / repress / resistance / transport / responsibility / ridiculous / rigid / ruins / rush … take form / take pictures / tenderly / terrors / the business of survival / the hand of a train station's clock vibrates after the jump / the metaphysics of … train station / travel / tremble / trouble / Trümmerfrauen / trust / truth / tyranny …useless / veracity / visit churches / wait / way / well-bred sons / wheel of darkness / winter / wisdom / women / words / world / you.
excerpt voice over English
Gezeiten based on materials from the archives of Marga Federlin (1899 - 1991, the artist’s grandmother) which contains 6000 Slides and notes from about 25 study trips done between 1962-1975. After selling the family home to the artist’s father in 1961, Marga Federlin, who was a devoted mother and wife found herself for the fist time in her life independent. She decided like many others of her generation of German middle class retirees to travel all across Europe, North Africa and Russia to study the “old masters.” With a complex, troubled history in their bags, convoluted feelings of guilt, denial on their mind, they boarded busses in well organized groups of silver haired travelers. At the end of each trip they would come together for a reflective evening in which one of Marga’s travel companion notes: “We set out to find the old masters, but all we found is our own culture mirrored back at us.”
In this work based on autobiographical materials, Geyer continues her interest in German post war history with a particular focus on the role of women in it. Often confined to the domestic histories, or portrait as bystanders to their active husbands, Geyer reflects on the uneasy, yet never the less responsible relationship of every day women to the larger national history and their active part in it. Choosing pictures her grandmother took of other women on the trip, the buses they traveled on and the landscapes they saw, Geyer overlays these images of “the other,” and other metaphorical pictorial references with a comprehensive, alphabetically ordered set of terms collected from her research material. Inspired by W.G. Sebald’s methodology of association rather then description, the work creates a multi-layered space in which her grandmother becomes a catalyst for understanding women’s roles in a collective past.
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