Elke Marhöfer

Elke Marhöfer was educated in Stuttgart, Chicago, New York, and Berlin. She lives and works as an artist in Berlin and teaches part-time at Valand School of Fine Arts in Gothenburg. Video has a preference in her work, yet she also applies installation formats, draws and creates sculptural settings. For nearness to large rivers eats the eyes Elke Marhöfer was endowed with the Lukas Cranach Award for video art in 2007.

Thursday, 8th March, 2012 - cinema Arsenal

19.00
Is there something else I've lost? D/China 2011, 38’, English subtitles
Ani, Nan DooKKeobiga Anigo Geobuk-ee Yo! (No, I am not a toad, I am a turtle!) D/Rep Korea 2012, 50’, English subtitles

21.00
Dalla nube alla resistenza (Von der Wolke zum Widerstand)
Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, Italien 1978, 103’, German subtitles

Elke Marhöfer presents two recent works which resulted from extended travels to China, respectively South Corea. Is there something else I've lost? shows, „how architecture, vegetables, and film invade each other, support each other, uproot each other." The film is set in the context of a community of small subsistence farmers on the outskirts of Wuhan in Southern China. It reflects on the gradual disappearance of these small economies as well as on the presence of an artist with her camera. In No, I am not a toad, I am a turtle! (D/Rep Corea 2012) traditional Pansori songs, animistic narratives, and neo-liberal presence overlap. Rhythm, cuts, and narration of the film are reflecting on a core Pansori theme, the unity of humans, animals, and objects.

From the Arsenal archive Elke Marhöfer chose Dalla nube alla resistenca by Jean-Marie Straub und Danièle Huillet. The film takes its inspiration from two texts by Cesare Pavese and deals with the animistic peasant traditions of Italy as well as with the country's fascist history.

Back issue of "Der Standpunkt der Aufnahme - Point of View":

Wednesday, 20th October, 2010

19.00
Bauern!, Elke Marhöfer, Burkina Faso 2007, DV, w/ German subtitles, 51’
permeable super real, Elke Marhöfer, China 2010, DV, w/ German subtitles, 34’

21.30
Carte Blanche
Trop tôt, trop tard (Zu früh, zu spät), Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Frankreich/ Ägypten 1981, 16 mm, German, 105’

Elke Marhöfer’s work is concerned with the problematic role of the artist as an observer. In her most recent videos, she is interested in the life of farmers who are increasingly confronted with crucial tests in the wake of globalization. In Bauern! (Farmers!) we witness a group of men and women harvesting cotton. In the video permeable super real, Marhöfer plays with abstraction and discontinuity as possibilities to liberate one’s own viewpoint from restraining premises.

Like the film Elke Marhöfer selected as carte blanche, Too Early, Too Late, she is not only interested in empathetic observation, but also in the conditions of this kind of perception: how the eye and the ear assemble the elements of meaning to a film and thus also to a mode of perceiving the world.

Find more informationen on Elke Marhöfer and her work on her website: www.whateverbeing.de