Pia Rönicke: 'Rosa's Letters - Telling a Story'

21. April–26. Mai 07

Two freestanding adjoining walls create a space within the space, and the film Rosa's Letters is projected onto one of them. A voice over is reading fragments from the letters in German, and a young woman is undertaking various activities in an apartment; some of which are related to the making of the exhibition: building a model, sorting slides, reading a book. Next to the projection a model of the apartment from the film is placed on a table and a series of slides are projected onto the window: images from a demonstration on the death day of Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin, 2006 are mixed with images from the artist's journey filming the second video on view. Walking behind the two freestanding walls, one is taken backstage and discovers the view through the windows of the actual space, as well as a monitor showing Recordings : a documentation of a journey to some of the places where Rosa Luxemburg stayed when she wrote the letters.

Reflecting the transformation that takes place when intimate letters, originally addressing a lover or a friend, become historical documents and thereby publicly accessible, the installation moves from staged situations and a slightly claustrophobic interior ( Rosa's letters and The Model ) to the reality captured in Recordings and what exists outside the windows of the exhibition space.

The installation was first shown at gb agency in Paris in 2006, when Rönicke also had a solo exhibition at Lunds Konsthal in Sweden. Further solo exhibitions include Tate Modern, London (w. Elsebeth Jørgensen) and Andersen_s Contemporary in Copenhagen. Rönicke is currently part of the exhibition Modelle für Morgen: Köln ; a project initiated by the European Kunsthalle in Cologne.