Moscouw

How can one express the potential of someone´s art when its creation requires a source of danger in the form of an observer? How can one portray an artist, who tolerates no one but herself as creator of self-portraits? These questions provide the foundation of Joerg Burger´s unique portrait of photographer Michaela Moscouw. Burger was granted the privilege of engaging the reclusive artist in an intimate conversation, though he was permitted to record it on audio tape only.

Moscouw is also a portrait of a person who is present and absent at the same time. Her stream-of-consciousness elucidation of her work lays a trail leading through a wealth of photographs, self-portraits showing Moscouw in a number of different poses, costumes and transformations, both at home and in public places. The camera moves smoothly as it scans the images while Moscouw´s rapid-fire comments describe the conditions under which they were created. At the same time, it uncovers an existential trail, revealing it to be both a game with voyeurism and provocation and an epistemological project.

Burger does not impose a specific interpretation; he deals with sound and image as two discrete elements. Though they approach each other, they remain separate. The conversation is "recreated" in hectic surroundings, hands leaf through a photo album in front of automatic doors. And Moscouw´s outdoor activities, which Burger illustrates with images of nearly deserted forests and meadows and a subway ride on the edge of Vienna, bear witness to the disappearance of a subject - a process which in the end is also manifested in photographs showing nothing more than black and white silhouettes.

(Dominik Kamalzadeh)