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Aufführung einer Autobiographie

Aufführung einer Autobiographie
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    • performance of an autobiography
    • Aufführung einer Autobiographie
  • 1973
  • pencil, ball-point pen, watercolor on paper
  • 44 × 62,3 cm
The precept upon which Ernst Caramelle based this work was a theme that he was assigned as a student at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna. The theme was “Analysis,” and he decided to analyze his life up to that point; his interest was less in preparing his autobiography in documentary form than in giving rise to an entirely new impression based on fragmentary reminiscences. For this, Caramelle used the space- and time-specific potential of photography and video, and what he created via these media marked the beginning of his important series of media art works. In Analyse [Analysis], conceived as a performance, he made a double-appearance of sorts: the one was as a live narrator speaking about his life through a microphone connected to a tape recorder. This text, however, was simultaneously overlaid with a second, pre-taped text. Parallel to this, he showed slides and video footage, the historicity of which he made visible not least in allowing this report on his life to ultimately transition into another video simulcast, thus appearing in duplicate here, as well, once in the flesh and once on the video screen. S.E.