Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

The German artist Ulrike Rosenbach has been a groundbreaking figure in new media since the early 1970s as evidenced in the new retrospective at the Zentrum für Kunst en Medien Karlsruhe held to coincide with her 80th birthday. As an early experimenter with new media, the artist developed “video live performance” in which she concurrently videotaped the work that the audience would experience as a performance, but also from a different angle on a monitor. This live, “closed circuit” with which she was the first to experiment, often included a layering of imagery as in “Glauben Sie nicht, daß ich eine Amazone bin,” 1975. The works would exist as a live performance, a performance with a video component, and later developed into video work. These subsequent projects could be developed into a video or into “media sculpture” such as “Die Einsame Spaziergängerin,” 1979/2009. Some media sculpture would be included in later performances after which a new video would be created such as “Orphelia” 1984/1987/1988. Rosenbach’s manipulation of multiple forms of media in dialogue with the diverse range of themes challenges understandings of culture that is indicative of a post-1960s moment. Her work is examined as a model of an artist’s cultural production that evades the stability of the traditional artwork and challenges a continuity of meaning.