All kinds of definiteness annoyed her. The inconsistencies, preferably the unresolved ones, were Ilka Lauchstädt’s

motivation to produce films, photos, videos and installations. She only worked on the parallel realities

and complexities to make the art work constituting a difference to reality. She examined rather than fabulated:

she enlarged, stopped, emphasised, view from another perspective.

Nevertheless, the scientific discourse she experienced while studying media sciences here in Osnabrück was

not a source of knowledge to her but, above all, a source of inspiration which sharpened her sensitivity to the

multiplicity of ambiguity, as can be seen in her early work »Gilda und Andrew« from 1986. Ilka Lauchstädt developed

narrative structures until her death in 2008 that endeavoured to transfer the richness of perception to

art. As early as in 1988, she presented the interactive work »Terra Z« at the EMAF, which expresses her ambition

of a narrative networking and visual multiplicity.

Ilka Lauchstädt immersed herself into trivial worlds to investigate them with media and thus give them meaning,

as in her works »Heim und Horizont« (»Home and Horizon«) or »Boelckestraße«. Finally, she used natural

scientific reality in her installation »The Botanist’s Delight« to discuss the influence of media on the circular flow

of nature. At the same time she worked on the autonomous life of the image. As always, she was not concerned

with identifying definiteness but about breathing life into a paradoxical and simultaneously banal reality. When

she once wrote that »every image has its own life« it was not meant metaphorically but, for once, literally.

Vito Orazem, born 1959 in Ljubljana, mediascientist, undertakes theoretical and practical analysis of photography,
holography and new media, focussing on media-immanent aesthetics, marginal phenomena in the media, and
reception processes. He is currently managing director at the Design Zentrum Nordrhein-Westfalen in Essen.

VIDEOS, VIDEOSTILLS AND PHOTOGRAPHY

Ilka Lauchstädt

GILDA UND ANDREW

Gilda is, where usually Andrew is. She thinks with herself.

Andrew is elsewhere. Somewhere at the end of

the world he searches ... and looses. Based on a passage

of Gertrude Steins ¯IDA® this work is a game of

love, desire and signs. They only come in touch on the

level of cutting.

��D, 1986, U-matic, 7:00

DUNKELLAND

Ilka Lauchstädt juggles in her Video with cinematographic

and lyrical text-passages which appear like

intertitles in silent movies and construct the subtle

floating dramatic scaffolding which bind the dreamlike

sequences. Vanishing points are in focus, lines

which seem to disappear in the endless perspectives

of the landscape.

��D, 2006, Mini DV, 13:00

THE BOTANIST´S DELIGHT (DAS

Medial breeding or mutations of imagination - two layers

beginning to mix.

��D, since 2005, Installation and DVD, Loop, 7:00

BOELCKESTRASSE

Ilka Lauchstädt´s light boxes show stills from a video

sequence, a tunnel beneath a motorway. It is an uneasy

situation of transition a foot passenger will pass

as quickly as possible.

��D, 2007, 4 Videostills, light objects

TEMPELHOF

Notations in the snow. A significant house in red and

white, shifted beyond the horizon. Space and time become

ambiguous, paradox.

��D, 2008, 12 photos

��Intervision-studio gallery

for photography and adjoining arts

www.intervision-net.de