Olaf Nicolai. Marx
On the occasion of the European Capital of Culture, the filmMARX (2020) by Olaf Nicolai will be shown at Kino Metropol.
The video will begin on September 22 at 12 noon and run for 24 hours, ending on September 23 at 12 noon. Admission is free.
The film MARX by Olaf Nicolai was recorded five years ago during the autumn equinox in Chemnitz. For 24 hours, the focus is on the changing play of light on the Karl Marx Monument, which was erected in 1971 in what was then Karl-Marx-Stadt and continues to shape the city’s image to this day. The chosen framing deliberately shows only part of the face, where light reflects off the strongly contoured bronze surface. In doing so, the monumentality is dissolved and transformed into a landscape.
The audio track captures the ambient sounds of the surroundings, including the chimes of the nearby town hall, without showing the related events or people. With this 24-hour close-up and the slow, picturesque transformation of an otherwise rigid icon, Olaf Nicolai questions our understanding of time, how it is measured, and what it means. The film ends with a quote from Danish poet Inger Christensen: “No one knows, despite everything, whether the universe is counting backwards, while we faithfully count forwards.” As a world premiere, the film was shown from September 21 to 22, 2021 in 16 institutions worldwide, including the Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz.
Olaf Nicolai was born in 1962 in Halle an der Saale and grew up in Karl-Marx-Stadt, now known as Chemnitz. Since the 1990s, Nicolai has been active as an internationally renowned conceptual artist. His work spans a wide range of media including installation, performance, sculpture, and sound, and often engages with language, everyday culture, and political themes.
Simultaneously with the film screening at Metropol, a presentation will take place at the Château de Montsoreau – Museum of Contemporary Art in France, as part of the exhibition The Mirror Effect.
Kino Metropol: https://metropol-chemnitz.com/marx-ein-film-von-olaf-nicolai-24h-screening/
