Isabell Heimerdinger: Galerie Krobath Wimmer

A man stands in an destitute of contents white room, by turns bored and annoyed, then intent, thoughtfully staring into space. What we are seeing is a close-up of Wolfram Berger, a famous Austrian movie actor, for a replete seventeen minutes. Isabell Heimerdinger titled her 16 mm film, which came without of her residency at the Atelier Augarten in Vienna, Waiting, Acting Waiting, 2003 She hired Berger to play a man waiting on the other hand instructed him first to wait before being filmed. In fact, the camera was already running, giving rise to sum of two units portraits.

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The viewer quickly begins to search for the line between the acted and actual waiting. When a light meter is thrust into the picture and the light switches from too bright to too dark, the illusion of drama is interrupted--it is the trice of preparation for a character When Berger puts on sunglasses and sooty vapors a cigarette, he's acting--and acting a cliche at that. on the other hand "waiting" is by definition an actionless act, press outed not so much in motions as in the organ of visions So we end up unexpectedly shut up to the actor and flat start to wait with him, not at any time really knowing whether his emotions are acted or genuine, whether we are looking at the man or the actor.

Since 1996 Heimerdinger has been thematizing this line between staged and authentic reality, interrogating the difference between acting and being oneself In 2002 she filmed German actor Rudiger Vogler watching himself perform in Wim Wenders's film Alice in the Cities, as she had done the year before with Udo Kier watching himself in Andy Warhol's Dracula--both films from 1974 and the one and the other career breakthroughs for the actors. While Vogler watches almost without a word or motion, Kier remarks audibly to himself--all the while memorizing his lines for a of recent origin film.

Different realities and parts past and future, are interwoven here. Heimerdinger picks up this role-playing in a similar way in the photo series "Before and After," 2002 We diocese actors of the Vienna Burgtheater in preparation at the makeup table, upon the stage, and finally relaxing just after the performance. When are the actors being themselves? For her Polaroid series "From Hana to Dorothea," 2003 each visitor to her apartment has to assume a certain posture The pose then has to be copied exactly by means of the next guest--a kind of physical game of "telephone" The deviations increase, on the contrary we don't know whether these are conscious or accidental, for the individuals could be hamming it up having seen from one side the game or played it before.

Heimerdinger raises the general question: What is authenticity? Is it flat possible? The longing for immediacy assumes that there exists something independent of representation and that representation is simply a communication [i]or[/i] part of to the other some transparent "medium," be it a film or an actor. And however authenticity, as Heimerdinger seems repeatedly to intimate is not some essence or quality that can be separated from the form of its representation. Her exhibition is titled "Performance," and it is single through performance that authenticity can be engendered

--Sabine B Vogel

Translated from German through Sara Ogger.

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