why walhalla

The photographic images of "off-scene.on" were taken in the Steintor-Variety theater, in the former Walhalla-Variety, in my hometown Halle/Saale in Germany. After 20 years I wanted to return to this place, where my mom took me when I was little girl and which has formed me somehow. I felt the need to re-view my past with the eyes of now. Surely, I could have go to the block of flats where I grew up, but besides of the fact that they were demolished, it would not have been the same, because the theater experience as a “observer” was truly unique and magical. The colors and the glitter fabrics, which inspired dreams, were not there out there in the city that was even famous for its fog, the industrial clouds and the grey cement.
The five compositions show the different places of the theater in a completely human absence and from my point of view, how I remembered: the corridors behind the scene with its colorful and ripped off posters with autographs; the canteen with its heavy metallic doors and door handles from a child’s point of view; the make-up room with its dense and colorful varnish on the windowsills; a little hidden stage with its working signs on the floor; the audience parquet with its little typical bistro tables and the stage itself, special because of its dimensions. The photographic composition of the big stage reminds in its arrangement religious icons in a church. As if it would be a memory of an altar.
The audio narration reveals the impressions that I had as a little girl entering for the first time in this theater.
The video, however, shows the acrobatic performance, which had a strong effect on me. These video shootings were taken from the Czechoslovak television that has broadcasted the spectacle “Spider” in 1987. I did a little digital restoration that has improved the quality of the image and the colors of the tape. Moreover, I did little changes in editing and time for coming nearer to the dreamy atmosphere at that time.