Counteracting Trivialization
"Heimatfilme (homeland films) from the 1950s and 1960s are the starting point for Petra Egg's miniatures. The artist uses these films to approach analytically the principles of construction and suggestive effects internalized by viewers that lead to both emotionalism and mental reassurance when watching Heimatfilme. To achieve this, she has chosen significant scenes, processed and assembled them into a continuous loop as if to counteract, through repetition, the diffusion and internalization of the filmís narrative, prompted by the appearance of ever-recurring clichès, in the viewers' perception. She thus focuses on the manipulative effect of such films by manipulating them herself. In 'miniature 2 (Wer die Heimal liebt; The Homeland Devotee)' the film segment is shown in a mirror image. The actor, Hermann Erhardt, who in 'Heimkehr' had already helped the Nazi's ideology achieve general acceptance, becomes, as he looks upwards and forwards, a truly Janus-faced character. In the original film, which tells the story of a hunter who shot a poacher and was thus transferred by his influential father from the mountainous region to the flatland of Burgenland, a transfiguration of nature prevails that reconciles all differences in regional topographies. The hunter, his gun ready to shoot, shown marching through a peacefully ordered and cheerful landscape mystified by the accompaniment of solemn, folkloristic music, appears to be a dilatory and lonely warrior. His appearance can be interpreted as a symbolic comment on the seamless continuity of Nazi Germany's idealization of man, nature and society to the tradition-oriented, Catholic-dominated post-war history of Austria. The theme of innocence embodied in the figure of the 'patient sufferer' is part of a simplifying rhetoric of identification which also uses the motif of the child as a synonym for pure, untouched and unspoiled nature." Rainer Fuchs
(translation: Anne Heritage)
"Heimatfilme (homeland films) from the 1950s and 1960s are the starting point for Petra Egg's miniatures. The artist uses these films to approach analytically the principles of construction and suggestive effects internalized by viewers that lead to both emotionalism and mental reassurance when watching Heimatfilme. To achieve this, she has chosen significant scenes, processed and assembled them into a continuous loop as if to counteract, through repetition, the diffusion and internalization of the filmís narrative, prompted by the appearance of ever-recurring clichès, in the viewers' perception. She thus focuses on the manipulative effect of such films by manipulating them herself. In 'miniature 2 (Wer die Heimal liebt; The Homeland Devotee)' the film segment is shown in a mirror image. The actor, Hermann Erhardt, who in 'Heimkehr' had already helped the Nazi's ideology achieve general acceptance, becomes, as he looks upwards and forwards, a truly Janus-faced character. In the original film, which tells the story of a hunter who shot a poacher and was thus transferred by his influential father from the mountainous region to the flatland of Burgenland, a transfiguration of nature prevails that reconciles all differences in regional topographies. The hunter, his gun ready to shoot, shown marching through a peacefully ordered and cheerful landscape mystified by the accompaniment of solemn, folkloristic music, appears to be a dilatory and lonely warrior. His appearance can be interpreted as a symbolic comment on the seamless continuity of Nazi Germany's idealization of man, nature and society to the tradition-oriented, Catholic-dominated post-war history of Austria. The theme of innocence embodied in the figure of the 'patient sufferer' is part of a simplifying rhetoric of identification which also uses the motif of the child as a synonym for pure, untouched and unspoiled nature." Rainer Fuchs
(translation: Anne Heritage)
