Helen A/B + das Meer

After her Gras A/B Sabine Marte once again investigates a construct of meaning; she dedicates herself in the video Helen A/B + the Sea to romantic genre conventions and clichés. The film begins with an image, shot from a computer monitor, of two people on a beach who alternately point at the horizon. A voice over (done by Marte) whispers doubts concerning whether the scene is real, citing the representation´s two-dimensional nature. A seagull gets ready to fly through the picture while the voice over gurgles and dies out.
Two-dimensionality, duality, (dual) relationships of body and voice, sound and image are subject to constant distortion, shifts, rejection and attraction. Filmic conventions such as a shot-countershot of a woman´s and man´s faces in the next scene reveal their formulaic character in the repetition and deceleration, which is controlled manually with the mouse.
As a result the musical soundtrack, which accompanies the seagull´s renewed attempt to fly through the picture and arouses expectations of romance, enters the realm of the eerie.

We see the couple again: Accompanied by piano music, a woman´s voice (from a dubbed version of Antonioni´s Identificazione di una donna, 1983) declares from off camera: "You are my love", and a man´s voice answers: "Say it again".
Irritations, blows and a yell are combined in a continuous repetition, while the couple´s faces show boredom, amusement and skepticism in the face of what is happening (on the soundtrack rather than in the picture) or their role as actors brought to a standstill.
The construct of a promise is revealed here too, the subtext is again shifted to the level of the performative. Its equivalent is provided in the final scene: Two men unite in a dance-like movement which stems from action/reaction, pressure/counterpressure, closeness/distance. The manginess and constant deceleration of the picture is underlined by a distorted performance of the spiritual "Oh, When the Saints" by Marte´s band "Pendler". Both the scene and the song end before coming to a complete standstill. It could go on like this forever....

(Claudia Slanar)

Translation: Steve Wilder