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KORONA

AXW: Did you write the text for KORONA? What was your inspiration ?

LDN: It has been nearly two years since I wrote the text for KORONA. I was inspired by the novel “Das Marmorbild” by Joseph von Eichendorff from 1818. In this novel the goddess Venus plays an important role. I had been working on female goddesses for some months, using different media and materials, when I wrote this text – most of it on one day. But after deciding that I was going to use it for the film I edited it and added new parts.
I write a lot more then I use in my work and most of what I write is never used again or, like in this case, a lot later then it is written.

AXW: Please tell us about your creative process, why so little image, using black screen, and where is the final image derived from?

LDN: This piece is the product of a lengthy process. In KORONA, you see images from July and November 2011, and February and late April 2012. I had not planned or scripted this film, I was shooting what I thought I would be able to use for something later. But this “something” was far from being defined.
When I reviewed my footage of the last year I slowly started constructing KORONA over a period of half a year. The final image was shot at a lake near Cologne, Germany, and shows my close friend Alisa Berger handing me a necklace made of stones collected in Denmark. This is a reference to Brisingamen, the necklace of the goddess Freja.

Many more images were considered in the making of KORONA, but I decided that I wanted the main part of the text to stand for its own and therefore focused a lot on how it is read. Working on this film brought certain realizations about my work; specifically, I aim to focus more on text-based work. In some ways, the black screen and slow rhythm reflect the time it took me to realize what I was doing myself.

Lena Ditte Nissen