Organics

Since 1996, parallel to all the other paintings and film work I made hundreds of pictures each with the title Organics, and each on the same size of paper - 61 x 43.5 cm. It is from this drawing phase that the film Organics (1998) developed. I already had the perfect found-footage lead whom I named "Hey Joe". Round "Hey Joe", who appears repeatedly as an observer, I constructed a matrix of body details which are broken up by a number of explosions. Organics begins with the observation of a Zorro mask and a distorted / veiled woman´s face. A shot of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris develops into a women´s foot scene which leads to a longer kiss scene punctuated by an explosion, falling leaves, a tank, touching hands, a hand in a plaster cast, bunches of grass and a dark cellar door. After observation of a skeleton detail, the found footage actors become involved in slowly feeling each others body. A man swings a necklace back and forth like a pendulum, a head being bandaged, attempts at face make-up, details of operations... in a flickering, pumping screen light until, in the end, "Hey Joe" centres the picture briefly with his penis. After the hand movements which follow, the veiled face of a woman appears again, longer this time, to be observed by "Hey Joe" until the film floodlight is turned off. The Organics sound track is pared down to a few slow note combinations. Organics is the last of the pumping screen / horror series Black Garden (1999) which includes The Murder Mystery (1987/92), Blicklust (1992), Party (1995), Macumba (1995) and Korridor (1997). (Dietmar Brehm)