Zeit für Experimente
Die Videokünstlerin und Autorin der Jungle World Felice Naomi Wonnenberg aus Tel Aviv zeigt am Samstag in Berlin ihre Videos und Kurzfilme. Wer’s experimentell mag, sollte sich das ansehen! Hier die Pressemitteilung:

Video Art and Experimental Films by Felice Naomi Wonnenberg at Lichtblick, Kastanienallee 77, Berlin Sat 18 Aug 07, 22:00 (the artist is present)

Felice Naomi Wonnenberg's video work is a unique, sometimes surrealist collage inspired by Jewish thought and political and gender issues. It combines in an intriguing manner Middle-Eastern reality with European cinematographic aesthtics. The Tel Aviv and Berlin based artist has been showing her video works and experimental films internationally since 1998, among others in the MoMA Museum of Modern Art New York (2007), The Israel Museum Jerusalem (2007), the Jewish Film Festival Berlin and in Goethe Institutes worldwide. She was awarded the ARTE / 3Sat prize for artistic innovation, her work was repeatedly screened on 3SAT (German speaking art TV channel) and in over 30 international film festivals. In 2001 she graduated from the Masterclass of the Berlin Art Academy (HdK Berlin – UdK) (the highest degree in visual art in German art academies). She has been living and working in Israel and Berlin as an artist, art critic and in museums since 2005. Her experimental films are shot on 16mm film (a format launched in 1923, used by surrealist and dadaist artists and later in WW2) and she also works with digital video.

The following films will be shown:

Kvetshing (Complaining) to Gertrude Stein
Mini video, 1 min, 2007
A chat with the portrait of Gertrude Stein in the Metropolitan Museum New York about the economics of the art world.

Jewel Garden
Experimental documentary, Digital video, 9 min, 2006
Screened at the MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York
Portrait of an 86-old 2nd-hand jewelry dealer on Berlin's shopping-mile Ku'damm. In an uncut 9 min. close-up shot, the camera glides over the glittering necklaces, war medals, Jewish Chanukah candlesticks, worn-out wedding rings and other broken dreams on sale. We never get to see the dealer, but we do hear him chat about his theories on love.

The Orient through Western Eyes
Video collage, 7 min, 2007
Video collage juxtaposing clips from early silent movies to modern fantasy blockbusters to show how the West has constructed its own image of "the Orient".

Cocoon
Video performance, 9 min, 2007
Some young men wander in the desert. In a cave they make the chance discovery of a giant cocoon with female content...

Weber C fracture
video installation, 5 min, 2007
A video installation about a time in hospital. Subjective views that the bedfast filmmaker shot from bed on wheels, using the bed on wheels as a dolly. And a performance in the hospital bed inspired by physiotherapy as well as Eadweard Muybrigde's chrono photography studies of movement sequencences of men and animals “Animals in Motion”.

A Turtle‘s Life in the Middle East
16 mm film and Super 8 black/white and color film, 10 min, 2003
An experimental documentary about fear after a terror attack and how to deal with it.

On the Edge of Swans
16 mm film and Super 8 black/white and color film, 12 min, 2000
In this non-linear film the male and the female are reconsidered visually, an oscillation between the sexes. Fighting swans on jet-black water with their slender beautiful necks remind us of Leda‘s seduction, yet also intimidate us by their aggressiveness. In a somber Garden of Eden we witness Eve‘s dialogue with the snake traps Eve in the first philosophical question ever: "Ma at ossa be gan eden?“ / „What do you do in paradise?“