In the interaction film Everybodies History Super 8 films from the artist’s childhood in the truest sense of the word become a space for reflection and action. The found footage material is subjected to analysis by way of the use of video effects: they interpret, focus, and repeat, zoom on, or fade out. In the film sequences treated in such a way, the artist intervenes performatively and enters into dialogue with the past and familial constellations. This method of performative interaction with found material the artist calls “performing found footage,” a method that she developed in the video Melting Away (1997). In Everybodies History, she makes possible a self-confident and reflexive approach to her own background and proclaims both in title and the ac- companying song the social relevance and dimension of the private pasts that we all share.
Everybodies History
This film is not about me, it’s everybody’s history. Where am I, who am I? through mother’s eye, father’s eye? This is about family, everybody’s history. If you watch your family, you face your own identity. Realize, analyze, through their eyes, through your eyes. This is about what you see, everybody’s history. Why am I how I am? Is this all what I can? Where am I, who am Ithrough mother’s eye, father’s eye?This film is not about me. f you see why you arehow you are than see far. Say goodbye to parents’ eye, look inside but sometimes see, from outside how you can be.Try to see how you are, than see far. Say goodbye to parents’ eye, try to change your point of view and see through.
The video was presented for the first time in the installation Mein Lichtspielhaus, which consisted of a cylinder shaped room covered with screens. Family motifs cut into the walls are made visible inside as lit up points. In the interior, there is a two-channel version of the film Everybodies History. On a spherical television, the artist can be seen: she sings the soundtrack and repeatedly leaves the spherical television to intervene in the film events on the video projection.
