My work as a videoartist is based on my search for finding ways to increase Empathy, may it be referred to human beings or towards different phenomenas of nature.
In collaboration with Telesia TV my Videos ‘Dances of Hope ‘and „Promises“ were screened between December 2021 and March 2022 in the Metros of Rome, Milan, Genoa and Brescia.
Presenting my work in public space allows a contact with the daily urban life which I appreciate a lot, combining different levels of perception as well as creating a parallel reality.
With this performance videos, with elements of Indian classical dance, I tried to open kind of a ‘virtual window’ within the suburban train stations to create space for reconnection with nature, a certain spirit of freedom, as well as a focus on one’s own body awareness. Kind of a Reality shift for one minute.
VIDEOS:
BALLI DI SPERANZA. INSISTERE / DANCES OF HOPE. INSIST.
Video loop, 4 min, 2021, Concept, Performance, Editing, Sound, Text: Carolina Goedeke. Camera: Monica M. Profumo
This Dance -Video transmits through elements of classical Indian Dance, set in an urban context, the wish to create a better life. Shot in the centre of Genoa, Italy, and at the Genovese coast.
DANCES OF HOPE.
Video Loop, 3 min. Concept, Performance, Clarinet, Editing: Carolina Goedeke. Camera: Monica M. Profumo. Moments of tranquillity focussing on inner calmness and spiritual dimensions, inspired by Indian bharata natyam Dance improvisations (only Abhinaya).
PAS DE DEUX CON I MIEI PENSIERI PESANTI
Video loop, 1 min, 2022. Concept, Performance, Camera, Editing, Music: Carolina Goedeke.
DANCES OF HOPE. ON THE PALM TREE.
Video Loop, 1 min. Performance, Editing, Clarinet: Carolina Goedeke. Genoa, Italy, 2022.
Camera: Monica M. Profumo, Music: J.S. Bach, Cello Suite adapted for Clarinet, Improvisation.
PROMISES / PROMESSE
Video loop, 1 min, 2021, Concept, Performance, Camera, Editing, Sound, Text: Carolina Goedeke.
Silent promises to the mountain, to the sea. ..as well as to myself.
VOCI DI ALTROIERI, SUONI DI OGGI / VOICES OF THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY, SOUNDS OF TODAY
Video Loop, 4 min, 2021. Concept, Performance, Camera, Editing, Sounds, Text, Costume: Carolina Goedeke.
Let it go,
everything you don’t need anymore. Like leaves in autumn.
Leave it alone. Let it go.
A personal ritual, performed in Munich in the apartment where I grew up, and in the parks of Nervi, Genoa, Italy, where I now live.
LETTERS TO LIFE: DANCES FOR A LOST SPRINGTIME
Video Loop, 4 min, and Photo series of Video Stills, 2020. Concept, Performance, Camera, Editing, Text, Painting: Carolina Goedeke
In this video I combine elements of dance, music and painting, with the intention of „celebrating“ the end of the lockdown in a performative way, with all the senses. In Munich, where I was brought up, there is the legend of the „Scheffler-Dance“, which says that after the plague epidemic in 1512 the first people who left their homes after the blockade were the Scheffler. They danced on the streets to encourage others who remained at home frightened. These dances were a sign that the city was finally safe.
TENSION, RELEASE
Video Loop, 5 min, and Photo series of Video Stills, 2020. Concept, Performance, Camera, Editing: Carolina Goedeke
A series of photos and a video, created by interacting performatively with the surrounding landscape. I combine different qualities of movement to form a contrapuntal dialogue:
Mimicry (adjustment that serves to deceive or protect oneself), tension and release as central components, which also inhabit a psychological symbolism. In cinematic blends, I visualize the “contact” of different emotional states with each other, inspired by the scenery of a rocky coast.
SONO QUA / I am here
Video Loop, 3 min, and Photo series of Video Stills, 2020. Concept, Performance, Camera, Editing, Text: Carolina Goedeke
The iconography of this video is inspired by a therapeutic meditation exercise: one calms down by imagining a “safe place” to which one can always return. The audience can identify with the protagonist of the video: when we observe relaxing body practices in a video, the brain receives neurological impulses as if we had performed these movements and then sends calming impulses to the nervous system.
RESPIRAMI/ Take a breathe
Video Loop, 6 min, and Photo series of Video Stills, 2020. Concept, Performance, Camera, Editing: Carolina Goedeke
These work is influenced by Body Theatre and Chi Gong practices. It has also a psychological component, based on mental exercises in which one imagines the communication between different parts of the own personality, e.g. visualizes an insecure inner child who is comforted in the imagination by his/her own “adult” mature voice in order to feel safe. The exercise promotes constructive communication between the different psychological states in one’s self.
AUTUMN CAT / Die Herbstkatze
Video Loop, 3 min, 2020. Concept, Performance, Camera, Editing, Text, Costume, Clarinet: Carolina Goedeke. Cat: Calico
A poetic contemplation about autumn and cycles of life, visualized through the mythic figure of the “Autumn Cat”, invented and performed by the artist, with the help of her cat.
This video was created during the November Lockdon in Munich, Germany, while I stayed with my 86 year-old father, searching for a kind of „magic protection“ in performance art itself. The cat died three weeks after we completed this video together. I did not know she had cancer. So it is also her plaint song.
STILL LIFE, STILL OPEN
Video Loop, 4 min, and Photo series of Video Stills, 2020. Concept, Performance, Camera, Editing, Text: Carolina Goedeke
A challenge: Keeping an open mind
Even if everything is closed
Shops, Beaches, Exhibitions, whole countries
Also my body.
I look at the old turtle in my neighbor’s garden and try to learn from her that slowness (which I hate) doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
The performance on the cliff I was doing in March, it was exactly the last day in which going to the beach was still allowed. I was insecure about including these shots, then I decided yes, they can also give a bit of hope by nurturing the desire for life as well as for a kind of rebirth. Happy Easter!
PARLO CON IL MARE/ I SPEAK TO THE SEA
photo series of Videostills and Video Loop, 2 min, 2020. Concept, Painting, Camera, Editing, Text: Carolina Goedeke
The video combines and overlays filmed paintings with film footage of the sea. The watercolour works are created in meditative processes in silent dialogue with the sea, always outdoors. The poetic text of my video oscillates between passages that might be directed at a human partner and parts that express a profound emotional attachment to the sea itself: So profound that a sense of personal responsibility for the state of the biosphere is clearly manifested.
INSOMNIA, MOZART LULLABY FOR ME AND MY CAT
Video Loop, 3 min, and Photo series of Video Stills, Quarantine, March 2020. Concept, Performance, Camera, Editing, Clarinet: Carolina Goedeke
A therapeutic video, again. It’s said that the images of cats as well as classical music have a potential to calm us down a bit. And here we go… My cat loves Mozart. I love my cat, Mozart, my Garden and Gymnastics. I’m in Quarantine in my house. I can’t sleep. Even the cat can’t sleep.
I’m going to the garden (I’m lucky, very lucky) to do some physical activity. Unfortunately, I woke up the neighbours already, I’m sorry.
I’m going back in the house. I play Mozart, a bit. That always calms me down. Excuse me, Amadeus, to use you as a lullaby. You’re too good. But this is an emergency.
And while I am moving , I try to observe, like an animal . . . observe the whole situation, calmly, patiently, without too many emotions, just observe . . . so does my cat. At least it seems that way.
BIRDS AND RESILIENCY
Photo series of videostills and videoloop, 14 minutes, 2017, in English Language. Concept, Performance, Drawings, Text, Camera, Editing: Carolina Goedeke, in collaboration with Dieter Goedeke (Slides)
I quote memories of my father’s childhood from 1939 in Berlin, Kaliningrad, and his refuge across the frozen Baltic Sea to „Frisches Haff“ and to Denmark in April 1945. This video is not a historical documentation, I visualize hope and “resilience”, the ability of the human soul to overcome traumatic experiences by establishing a positive force within. I combine these texts from a child’s point of view with surreal performance scenes in nature.
ERINNERUNGSRAEUME/ SPACES OF MEMORY – Performing Letters to the Other World
A Video Requiem for Ingrid Goedeke, 1932 – 2015 Series of 12 Video Loops, each 2 -6 min, and Photo Series. In collaboration with my father Dieter Goedeke (Slides), Berlin / Munich / Weissensee (Austria), 2016 / 17
The starting point of this work is the death of my mother in 2015. I work in my studio with slides of her life, which my father took 60 years ago. These images create a virtual space, into which I enter with my performances, creating a visual meditation on the timeless dimension.
The first video cycle “in the mountains” shows the cross-fades of a slide from 1958 with filmed scenes of my performances, which I performed in 2016 in exactly the same place (Alm hinterm Brunn, Weissensee/ A ): A performance- meditation on the dimension of eternity and the possibility of being in contact.
THE AIRY OCEAN/ IL OCEANO ARIOSO
8 minutes, Video-Loop, 2018
Filmed watercolor paintings and ink drawings, with Clarinet Music Improvisation, 2018. Concept, Painting, Clarinet, Camera, Editing: Carolina Goedeke
A meditative reflection about new beginnings in interim phases in life. After travelling often from Berlin to the Ligurian Sea, I noticed how the observation of the sea was constantly challenging my notion of time: I started to appreciate more the rhythms of slowness and the dynamics of pauses which seem to have a quality of stagnation on the first view.
But can’t exist a lot of movement in periods of apparent stillness, while being in unhurried interim periods of transition?
AMBIVALENT, Video-Loop, 6 min, 2014.Concept, Drawings, Clarinet, Camera, Editing: Carolina Goedeke
Surreal diary-like drawings, filmed in a suggestive way: Moments of the Ups and Downs in human relationships, the crisis as a new beginning.
VIDEOSTILLS from the works “Dances for a lost Springtime”, “Still life, still open”, “Insomnia”, “Sono qua”, “Respirami”, “Tension/ Release”, “Parlo con il mare” e “Voci di altroieri”, 2020/ 2021:
I accentuate empathy or even love as an approach to the forces of nature that is not denying the horror of natural disasters and concern about climate change, but focussing on the joy of connection and of being part of the universe.
My artistic work is influenced by the works of the Californian philosopher Donna Haraway and the Berlin Biologist/Philosopher Andreas Weber. Both postulate a dialogical and empathic relationship with natural phenomena: As a possible way to generate capacity to act in the face of climate change.
My two-minute video-Loop „Parlo con il mare/ I speak to the Sea” is inspired by the painting „La Sposa del Mare/ La Innamorata del Mare” by Pompeio Mariani, on display at the Modern Art Gallery of Genova Nervi. The semi poetic text of my video oscillates between passages that could be addressed to a human partner and passages that evoke a deeply felt emotional bond with the Mediterranean sea itself: So deep that the feeling of a more personal responsibility for the biosphere becomes evident.
I filmed my intuitive performances in the Ligurian landscape for the creation of the Videos “Respirami/ Take a breathe“, “Sono qua/ I am here”, and “Tension, Release”. These works are inspired by the meditative exercise „my safe place”, a contemplation that derives from trauma therapies.
„The Airy Ocean“ is a meditative reflection about new beginnings, times of transition and slowness, consisting of filmed paintings and Clarinet Improvisation.
During my project ”Birds and Resiliency” I tried to understand better the experiences my father had made as a child being a refugee during world war ll.
”Erinnerungsraeume/ Spaces of Memory” is a series of videos based on performances I created after the death of my mother, searching to find relations with unknown aspects of her life as well as maintaining whatever sort of contact towards another dimension.
„Ambivalent“ is consisting of surreal diary-like drawings, filmed in a suggestive way: Moments of the Ups and Downs in human relationships, the crisis as a new beginning.
