The two-channel video installation by international artist Sandra Schäfer shows, on the left screen, an essay film on August Sander’s portraits of Schäfer’s great-aunts and uncles, members of a farming family in the Westerwald. On the right are landscape images taken using lidar technology – laser scanning used in navigating autonomous vehicles. The two-channel projection typically used in Schäfer’s video works breaks away from the iconic role and meaning attributed to the single filmic image and unveils different levels of meaning. Image analysis is the very method of socio-cultural critique. So, by opening the film with the image of Sander’s son’s famous death mask, the artist asks how this indexical representation might work in tandem with the new lidar technology. How is our understanding of »nature« changed by how it is visually realised through (modern) technologies? How has our vision of agriculture and farmers changed since Sander?

With Westerwald: A Visitation, Schäfer returns to Germany after decades working in Istanbul, Beirut, Kabul, Rome and elsewhere, and projects her cinematic analysis of (geo)political tensions in the public arena onto her home village. Westerwald can also be read as Schäfer’s »Return to Reims« because, as a refuge de classe (a term coined by Annie Ernaux), the artist confronts the problems of class affiliation and discrimination for the first time.

In cooperation with SK Stiftung Kultur

Guest: Sandra Schäfer

This film will also be available online on our VoD platform from March 29 to April 10, 2022. Please note: This film will only be available in Germany.