Film-Installation
House
On view throughout

Ralf Petersen has made a film in which he has manipulated found material; an archive of decay. The found material is scratched, alienated, painted and pasted over as part of the work. In the context of STWST48x10 NOPE, the finished film is cut up again: Individual splinters, still images, sound snippets are mounted in the STWST and refuse to come together as a complete work of art.

The found film fragments dance, tracted and colored, to ominously set music that tips over from the atonal into the electronic and further into the flavors of Krautrock, Noise and Free Jazz. The view of the ephemeral images, largely taken from old documentary, amateur and advertising films, is restricted, blocked by copied-in grids and nets. The climate appears maritime to martial: a gigantic ship sets sail, probably more for war purposes than for the transportation of holidaymakers.

[…]

The spirit of contradiction in On the High Seas lives in the interstices of a representational lack of visualization. At sea, things become intangible, they trickle and stumble away incessantly: an ocean motion picture in a psychedelic frenzy of color. (Stefan Grissemann)

Ralf Petersen (*1992, Germany) is an author and artist. He has been part of the STWST team since 2024.
ralfpetersen.info