Picture Scroll
Picture Scroll, excerpts, work in progress, 2023
Picture Scroll, detail, pencil drawing on tracing paper
Picture Scroll, detail, pencil drawing on tracing paper
Picture Scroll, pencil drawing on tracing paper, 300x30 cm, in progress 2023 -
The work approaches the language of narrative medieval manuscripts and Japanese picture scrolls through film. Tracking shots of a panoramic drawing, form a visual journey where time, space and characters intertwine.
The magnification of the macro lens used for the shoot, brings us deep into the world of the drawing. The illusion is broken when the camera rolls off the edge of the paper. A piece of tape appears, a ruler that holds the paper in place, implying that the drawing has a given size, that it exists as an object in a real place.
To be completed as a multi-channel film installation.
Picture Scroll, production stills, 2023
Picture Scroll audio play
Picture Scroll, single voice version of audio play 2024
Single voice narration of audio play. While developed as a freestanding work, it is conceived as a lose soundtrack to accompany the Picture Scroll film.
Plot: In an old Berlin apartment building, BLOCKWART, the ghost of a former city block warden, secretly watches the tenants, sensing their weaknesses and influencing their actions. New tenant BOULD, whom Blockwart nicknames after the Norse god Balder, stands out as pure and uncorrupted, in love with the beautiful BERTHA. Bould’s neighbors include his doppelgänger, the broken but friendly DROOPY, and his rival, furniture dealer M.C. LUDVIG. Above lives Bould’s idol, KLAUS LIEBCHEN, a pompous retired designer, and below, the erratic DR. MICHAEL. Blockwart manipulates the tenants, ultimately leading to Droopy’s mysterious disappearance, fingers pointing at the unraveling Bould.
The piece spans a calendar year, with each scene representing one month, set in a fantasy city inspired by Berlin. It explores themes of guilt, tied to the city's dark past through the character of Blockwart, a figure rooted in the historical role of Blockleiter—once tasked with enforcing National Socialist doctrine and spying on citizens. With his omnipresence as the narrator of the story, Blockwart is a trickster, meddling in the vulnerabilities of human nature. He is reminiscent of Loki from Norse mythology, from which Picture Scroll draws inspiration. Bould's nightmares and anxiety over Droopy’s disappearance parallel the myth of Balder’s death, killed by his own brother, who had been tricked by Loki.