Endarchiv
Germany
18'
- Synopsis
- Curatorial presentation
Endarchiv examines the symbolic process of disposal and forgetting while raising the question how to take care of the emotional and performative remains of the GDR and its oppositional movements. The film maker Anna Zett is seen spray painting short questions and statements onto large mounds of pebble gravel, where every step leads to a rockslide. The action is interspersed with found footage filmed by Klaus Freymuth, showing artists and demonstrators painting and writing onto the East side of the Berlin Wall shortly after the border was opened in November 1989.
Like a final storage facility, the final archive (Endarchiv) is a paradoxical place for Anna Zett, where memories and meanings are simultaneously stored and made to disappear. The starting point for the film is archive footage of the artistic painting of the eastern side of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the subsequent painting over by the border police. The artist confronts the historical art action with a writing performance on the crumbling surface of a pile of gravel. The spray-painted messages carry the symbolism of the dwindling further as Zett addresses nature, beginning with “Dear Environment.” With her hands and feet, she blurs parts of the messages, transforming them in this way into new statements. Mindfully, she moves across the stones line by line, leaving a cleansed surface at the end. “Learn the language of power, but let it go at the right moment”. In ENDARCHIV, Anna Zett questions the finitude of meaning and celebrates the possibility of being able to shape the process of writing and letting go oneself. (NRW – Forum)
