js-lab.net - Janis Schroeder

The European Border photos, research-based, video

The European Border is a collection of images taken along the Bulgaria-Turkey border zone. Primarily shot at night, the video and sixteen photographs convey my impressions of this boundary region, which I visited for five days as part of a month-long artist residency based in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Iluta and the death of the dragonfly research-based, video

“What remains when a person dies?” Latvian folklore enthusiast and translator Iluta Narvila and I have turned to the Dainas, a collection of Latvian folksongs, in search of an answer to this question. In the course of our video research, we have engaged in an experimental exploration of pagan wisdom about man and nature, life and death. Despite primarily being a research assistant at the start of the project, Iluta gradually evolves into its main protagonist.

Zwischenraumerkundung [Exploring the space in between] research-based, video

By hanging posters throughout the city, the filmmaker seeks to engage participants for a film about what it is like to feel at home- or not to feel at home. The film’s six protagonists have either migrated to Germany themselves or are children of people who have migrated to Germany. Their ways of life are therefore shaped by at least two worlds – the world they live in and the world they come from. Shot at locations throughout Berlin that were each chosen by the respective participants, this film attempts to figure out, through conversation, what it means to “feel at home” under these conditions. These exchanges are deliberately open-ended in order to leave room for the protagonists to focus and reflect on elements that are important to them, personally. Thus, the question of belonging – which tends to evade clear answers, particularly in realities shaped by migration – is dealt with and negotiated in many different ways.

The long poem of the space in between research-based

Made in collaboration with the fellow Digital Anthropologies researchers and practitioners, this intervention, titled The long poem of the space in between, served as an opportunity to recontextualize findings from my ongoing video research project Exploring the space in between, which I had been working on for about a year at the time. After filming intensely in the weeks preceding this intervention, I turned off the camera and computer in order to focus on the essential: the connection between us, her, him, it, me, the environment of our meeting place and the objects present in that environment. To this end, I also applied certain Games for Actors and Non-Actors from Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. With the participants of the group residency, we explored the in-between space, that which stands between us, that which connects us to each other, that which connects us to the in-between space.

Le métier de vivre [Life’s work] research-based, video

The video essay tells the story of two male midwives in Geneva, Switzerland. Due to conflicts in their home countries (Burundi and Iran), the two men fled to Switzerland, where they became the first men working as midwives there. Through the vita of these two people, the video essay seeks to challenge dichotomies of man-woman, black-white, north-south, and foreigner-native.

Parcours installation, research-based, video

The three chapters of this video installation play in three cities in the Ruhr region of Germany. There are three protagonists of different generations walking down the pedestrian streets of these cities on foot. A long camera movement shows them only from behind, their eyes fixed on what they have in front of them. They tell personal stories related to the emergence and appropriation of public space, as well as the region’s history of coal mining.

BIOS: Histoires de la Ruhr [BIOS: Stories from the Ruhr Region] edition, photos, research-based

This artist’s book was created during the research for the video installation Parcours. It brings together many personal and less personal stories that did not make their ways into the videos of the installation: about parts of the conversations with the protagonists of the videos; about a visit underground with three miners in one of the last mines of the Ruhr region still open today; about other artistic practices from the region including those of Richard Serra and James Benning, among others. The stories are juxtaposed with abstract drawings and photos of mushrooms, which stand for the diversity of the stories that were collected in the region, and for the deep connection of the Ruhr region with the soil.