Domestic Concerns
(2021)

The project Domestic Concerns began with research into the collapse of the building holding the Histo­ri­sches Archiv der Stadt Köln in 2009. Two thirds of the archival material survived the collapse of the building, however more than thirty kilometers of archival material was inacces­sible after the collapse. Local commu­nities have been highly involved and concerned about the consequences of the collapse.

Indepen­dent groups of artists, archi­tects, authors, committed citizens, and local initia­tives have been making an effort to find ways to transform the former site into a space of collec­tive memory. Though much archival material was destroyed or rendered inacces­sible, the world-famous archive building in the Severin­straße by archi­tect Fritz Hafer­kamp had a special cellar that saved an amount of parti­cular photo material. Together with the fire brigade, the Histo­ri­sches Archiv der Stadt Köln was able to rescue this archival material from the cellar. After an inten­sive corre­spon­dence with the institution, five survi­ving images from the photo cellar were digitised and sent to be used in the project.

These five images are photo­graphs of a sculp­ture in the Rhein­park, Cologne, titled Huise­lijke Zorgen (Domestic Concerns) by the Dutch artist Rik Wouters. The sculp­ture is a woman figure with crossed arms, head slightly bent forward, thoughtful. The project traces a histo­rical passage of the statue’s inter­me­diate presence in the Rhein­park since 1957 and in the archive. The images survived the 2009 disaster and were rescued and cared for by archi­vists. The material reality of the statue and its image have been inter­woven with an ongoing and layered contem­porary (hi)story.

The installation of histo­rical sequences of the archival image are shaped as a cinema­to­gra­phic concep­tion. An associa­tive movement, in 420x420 cm film frame by 270 moving sequences shots as score, becomes a perfor­mance, gradu­ally connecting and allowing issues of the collapse of collec­tive memories and archival image’s media­tions. The project is an engage­ment in elabo­ra­ting and constel­la­ting images of place and time like a daydream.

These five images are photo­graphs of a sculp­ture in the Rhein­park, Cologne, titled Huise­lijke Zorgen (Domestic Concerns) by the Dutch artist Rik Wouters. The sculp­ture is a woman figure with crossed arms, head slightly bent forward, thoughtful. The project traces a histo­rical passage of the statue’s inter­me­diate presence in the Rhein­park since 1957 and in the archive. The images survived the 2009 disaster and were rescued and cared for by archi­vists. The material reality of the statue and its image have been inter­woven with an ongoing and layered contem­porary (hi)story.

The installation of histo­rical sequences of the archival image are shaped as a cinema­to­gra­phic concep­tion. An associa­tive movement, in 420x420 cm film frame by 270 moving sequences shots as score, becomes a perfor­mance, gradu­ally connecting and allowing issues of the collapse of collec­tive memories and archival image’s media­tions. The project is an engage­ment in elabo­ra­ting and constel­la­ting images of place and time like a daydream.

The separ­ately printed sequen­tial images include three layers of red, blue, and green risographed colours. The layers allow for the recon­struction of time and space in an open duration. The edited sequen­tial images consti­tute a film sequence, and generates the shaken movement of the statue and its surrounding lands­cape.

By trans­fer­ring the archival images into cinematic spaces and into the present time, the images become a perfor­mance of histo­ries and of tangible social memories. What forms of remem­brance are needed in today‘s Cologne after the archive’s collapse? How can we imagine the shape of collec­tive memories together in a process of remem­be­ring, forget­ting, or caring?