Click to view Show 1 Enduring Adversity
KORONA; (2013); Lena Ditte Nissen; TRT: 10.20
Mist ascends from the moor and curls up like figures out of the soil.
Statement about this work:
Ambience reaches from the words that are spoken ever so feebly, while shedding successive layers of tremor, and construe a world of sensuous experience. Overwhelming, cast out from the realm of rationale, these words become an incantation as appearing recollections guide with seducing rhythm towards a clearance: what one plunges through is not the space of forms intensified, but of ethereal trajectories open to the self in the shape of mythological themes. Narration is then the catalyst for a thriving outcome of this ritual, which calls forth a close relationship between body, text, and the rough yet fascinating textures of the image.
Q: Did you write the text for KORONA? What was your inspiration?
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.
Q: Please tell us about your creative process, why so little image, using black screen, and where is the final image derived from?
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 the time it too k me to realize what I was doing myself.
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