OBAMAINBERLIN  VADIM ZAKHAROV / NIKLAS NITSCHKE

In front of the ruins of the former coal power station, built on the shore of the Oder river, there is still the cooling tank, covered with duckweed. The two tall towers of the power station are perforated by numerous bullet holes, presumably Russian artillery. Zakharov sinks an 8mm porn film from the 1970s, originating from a dispersed private archive, in the former tank. The film footage is meant to be cleansed of its pornographic coating and the porn to ‘die’.

 

In those months, Zakharov is busy collecting, displaying and archiving private 8mm films on sale, all from Germany and the second half of the 20th Century, before 1989. They are recordings that were made at a time, when there was no opportunity for a Russian to visit the private lives depicted in these films - flowers, celebrations, holidays during the West German ‘economic miracle’. The building-up of this film archive happens after Zakharov has largely completed the compilation of an online archive based on his documentary material on Moscow Conceptualism. The allocation having taken effect here, he moves to a private life, which is of no interest to anyone anymore. The porn film, found among the footage purchased in ignorance of its contents, on the one hand cannot become the object of care by archiving it, on the other hand it is also not meaningful to simply remove it from the lot. At this point it becomes an object that is abandoned in the “dead zone”.

 

In a window sawed out of the wooden mass model of The Embarkation for Cythera (Antoine Watteau, see November the 6th, 2011) Nitschke plays - against the background of the two chimneys of the power station - with marionettes made from black grass. He performs along a piece of music that is played from an iPhone, laid across the stage area, the first movement Elegy from String Quartet no. 15 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Zakharov is handed a chair, whose legs Nitschke first trims in the correct angle for the slope above the cooling tank of the plant; apart from the camera, documenting the small play without a plot, Zakharov, for the duration of the performance, holds in his hand a buzzing vibrator, loosely coated with cotton swabs.

 

The surface of the film footage has partially solvated after one week in the water and to some extent can be wiped off with a sponge. When cleaning the filmstrip it breaks several times, and a big piece of the film remains in the water.

 

From upon a weir, Zakharov throws large carnations into the green surface on the spot where the movie roll is situated. The flowers slowly float away on the surface of the tank. Two weeks after Zakharov has put the title music of an Emmanuelle sequel to the footage of this action, Sylvia Kristel, the leading actress of this erotic series with a mass appeal, dies.

 

From upon a groyne, Zakharov and Nitschke are then fishing with two modified fishing rods in the Oder river. The large hooks, tipped with colorful feathers as bait, are not floating far despite the strong current around the end of the groyne, for that the water resistance of the film footage is too strong. The assembly remains in the eddies of the groyne. From the action of clamping a cat ball toy to the film as a bobber - it seems - one or two sample bites can be read off.