It Has a Golden Sun and an Elderly Grey Moon Ulla von Brandenburg

It Has a Golden Sun and an Elderly Grey Moon is the title of both Ulla von Brandenburg’s new film, which served as the narrative thread for a series of exhibitions held in 2016 in Canada in Toronto (The Power Plant) and Montréal (Fonderie Darling), in Melbourne, Australia (ACCA) and Miami, Florida (Perez Art Center), and also of this publication, which is part monograph, part artist book.  This allegorical phrase resonates as an invitation from the artist, beckoning us to circulate within the prelude-spaces offered by the practice of sacred and animist rituals, and within the contemporary space of forms of artistic representation such as theatre, dance and performance.  In the context of this book, it also echoes 17th century “dramatic poetry” in which the text is a multiple space, a whole in which images and dramatic arts merge, in which the world is recreated through theatrical effects, through images, all of which take shape within the space of the book itself.  Enchanted by this almost magical formula, we find ourselves submerged in Ulla von Brandenberg’s own unique world, one she has been building since the 2000s, a world between reality and illusion, past and present, sacred and profane, in which her preferred media of installation, film, performance and painting all intermingle.
The book’s design reflects and resonates with that of the film, unfolding five of the film’s themes which are also recurrent in von Brandenburg’s broader work: colour, ritual, movement, stairs, and textiles.  These themes are inspired by Adolphe Appia’s modern theatre stage design and architecture, the dance of Rudolf Laban and the Judson Dance Theater, Samuel Beckett’s movement studies and John Cage’s musical indeterminacy.

Ulla von Brandenberg’s film programme presents a collection of films produced between the 1920s and the 1960s by influential artists in the field of experimental cinema and post-modern German and American dance.  Positing dance and movement as the driving force behind the dramatic arts, many of the films portray daily life transformed into absurd and surrealist worlds in which psychodrama is married with the grotesque, the fantastical with the effects of minimalist repetitions. Final programme (to be confirmed) :

–    Tanzerische Pantominen, by Suse Byck of Valeska Gert, 1925, 3 min.
–    A Study in Choreography for the Camera, Maya Deren, 1945, 2 min 30.
–    Ritual in Transfigured Time, Maya Deren, 1945-46, 16 min.
–    Nine Variations on a Dance Theme, by Hilary Harris of Bettie de Jong, 1966, 13 min.

It Has a Golden Sun and an Elderly Grey Moon, Ulla von Brandenburg, 2016
Ed. Alexandra Baudelot
Published by Mousse Publishing
Autors : Alexandra Baudelot, Matthieu Doze, Jacinto Lageira, Jeremy Lecomte, Suzanne Muller, Ida Soulard, Ulla von Brandenburg
Graphic design : Jean-Claude Chianale

Published in 2016
Bilingual edition (french / english)
24,5 x 29 cm
216 pages
Distribué par les Presses du Réel
ISBN : 978-88-6749-199-5