Margaret Raspe

Margaret Raspé , née Ranke, (* 1933 in Breslau ) is an international German artist, photographer and filmmaker who has been known as a pioneer of feminist artistic film since the early 1970s through her performative experimental films. From 1971 to 1974 films were made with the self-developed "camera helmet". There were also video and audio works, performances and installations, painting and drawings, sculpture and architecture, as well as works that thematized the contrast between nature and civilization in gardens and landscapes. For example, as a performer, the artist went publicly into industrially polluted rivers.

Life

Schooled in 1939 in Berlin, Margaret Raspé graduated from high school in Lindau on Lake Constance in 1951. After an apprenticeship as a tailor with a journeyman's examination in Bonn from 1951 to 1954, he studied painting and fashion at the Munich Art Academy with Kaspar, and at the University of Fine Arts, Berlin, fashion with Lemcke, painting with Janisch. 1957 marriage with Gerhard Raspé, 1958–61 three daughters. 1958 to 1970 worked as a fashion designer and trained with the respiratory therapist Frieda Goralewski. 1969 divorce.

plant

Resumption of artistic work from 1970. Invention of the camera helmet 1971, first experimental films. 1974 member of the London Filmmakers Coop and Film-Coop Berlin. With the camera helmet she invented in 1971, she was able to film and work with her hands at the same time. Films such as "Every day again - let them swing" were created as in-house productions, as recordings of female actions in the kitchen. In 1978 she became a member of the New Society for Fine Arts, NGBK, Berlin. As a member of the NGBK working group, she helped organize the exhibition Unbeknownst to Production Forms and other exhibitions in Berlin and Italy whose overarching theme was “Time and Movement in Space”. First public installations. Between 1978 and 1985 she made the documentary "Anasteria - The Festival of the Lagadas Firewalkers" in Greece. 1984 to 1993 exhibitions on the subject of art and nature, in the garden at Rhumeweg 26, Berlin. Organization of exhibitions with Berlin artists in Palazzo Ruini, Reggio nell'Emilia, Italy.

1985 to 1990 drawing teacher at the Lette-Verein Berlin, fashion department. 1991–92 teaching position at the TU Berlin, architecture department. Further teaching at art schools in London, Amsterdam, Breda, Vienna, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Hamburg, Braunschweig.

The artist created a work that was largely independent of the art market, artistically self-sufficient and unorthodox. Her house, Rhumeweg 26, was a popular meeting place for well-known artists, musicians, writers and theorists: Walter Aue , Günter Brus , Limpe Fuchs , Joel Fisher , Ludwig Gosewitz , Dick Higgins , Allison Knowles , Otto Muehl , Arnulf Rainer , Tomas Schmit , Peter Kubelka , Hermann Nitsch , Gerhard Rühm , Rudolf Valenta , Oswald Wiener and others.

Margaret Raspé is one of the actresses in the film, Seven Women , part of the trilogy Shapes of Love by the film director Rudolf Thome .

The artist lives and works mostly in Berlin, and part of the year in Karpathos, Greece.

Margaret Raspé's films are archived in the Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum for Film and Television, Berlin .

Film and video

The films with the camera helmet , shot between 1971 and 1983, last between 4 and 30 minutes. The only sound is the sound of the film projector . The artist used the lightest cameras at the time that were easy to obtain: Agfa Super 8 . The camera helmet modeled by Margaret Raspé holds a frame mounted in front of the field of vision and a camera at the same height in the direction of view. The artist sees what the camera is recording through the frame. This control of the subjective central perspective allows a particularly precise and spontaneous guidance of the so-called "subjective camera" , a directly subjective camera tied to the body that includes all movements of the eyes and the head.

In terms of content, the films partly show the transformation of the material during cooking as a symbolic alchemical process. Cut, dismember, reassemble. After the kitchen films, a drawing film and two painting films were made.

Demonstrations and seminars

• 1973: Hamburger Filmschau (invitation by Vlado Kristl )
• 1975: Arsenal cinema, Berlin
• 1996: Anthology Film Archives, New York, USA
• 1978: Filming for The Big Week in Olimbos , Frank Czygan and Margaret Raspé
• 1978: London Filmmakers' Cooperative, UK
• 1978: Lectures on the films at St Martins School of Art, Royal College of Art, Slade School
• 1979: 3rd International Avant-Garde Film Festival, London, UK
• 1979: Film as Film , exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, UK
• 1980: Seminar at the Minerva Art School, Groningen. Netherlands
• 1980: Split Film Festival, Yugoslavia
• 1980: Bicentennial Los Angeles, Women Filmmakers of Berlin at UCLA
• 1981: Berlin Film Festival, International Forum for Young Films, Arsenal
• 1981: Seminar at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg
• 1981: University of Göttingen, Institute for Journalism
• 1982: Seminar at the Breda Academy of Art, Netherlands
• 1982: Caracas Film Festival, Venezuela
• 1982: Cineclub Sorbonne, Paris, France
• 1983: Seminar Art Academy Vienna, Austria
• 1990: Videomiel . Video installation in the Powerhouse Gallery, Montreal
• 1994: Ecce Homo - Modulazioni . Alpha Centauri Gallery, Parma, Italy

In addition to the films with the camera helmet, there is a work section consisting of documentary films, film installations and video installations. One example is TV Breakfast , a video installation in 1994 in the solo exhibition Ecce Homo - Modulazioni , Galeria AlphaCentauri, Parma.

First text about the films with the camera helmet by the film and video artist Monika Treut .

performance

• 1990: I create and distribute what is not mine. Congress of Alternative Nobel Laureates in Villa Era, Vigliano Biellese , Italy
• 1988 Colazione all'Alba . Performance based on a concept by Margaret Raspe, with Rosanna Chiessi, Wandrè, Esther Ferrer, Margaret Raspé. PicNic in Italia, international performance project in Capri. Production Pari & Dispari, Rosanna Chiessi
• 1987: Un Dessert by Goethe . Galerie Pari & Dispari, Rosanna Chiessi, Cavriago, Italy
• 2017: Reenactment Performance 'Rear Projection'. Kunstverein Braunschweig, executed by Clara Bausch. To the exhibition APPARAT.

Installations

• The identity cabinet: prototypes such as housewives, civil servants, whores, revolutionaries, nuns and policemen are attached as semi-plastic figures on plates with holes for the head and arms. The panels are put together to form an interior space that makes it difficult for visitors to recognize the figure they are slipping into from behind.

Horticultural exhibitions

The artist organized garden exhibitions in the garden of her house in Berlin with well-known artists, including Henning Christiansen , Joan Jonas , Rolf Julius , Wolf Kahlen and Timo Kahlen and Emmett Williams .

Photo work

• 2001: photographic works, drawings and installations. Art Salon Bel Etage, Berlin
• 1984: focal points - light phenomena. Quergalerie, Berlin.

Other works

• 1975–77 drawing diaries

Solo exhibitions

• 1992: Ladder to Lifeboat, installation in Palazzo Ruini, Reggio nell'Emilia (catalog)
• 1990: Videomiel , video installation at the Powerhouse Gallery, Montreal. At the invitation of the Goethe-Institut Montreal.
• 1988: eye level . Photo installations, Galerie Concept, Berlin and Wewelsfleth (catalog)
• 1987: The metaphorical partners . Academy of the Arts Berlin , film-space installation.
• 1987: Musica da Camera . Palazzo Ruini, Reggio nell'Emilia, Italy (catalog)

Group exhibitions

• 2009: Passing Through. Art point Berlin
• 2004: Chiemseeart, Amerang municipality
• 2003: Pic Nic A Capri - Dispari & Dispary Project, Reggio nell'Emilia, Italy
• 1991: Interferences: Art from West Berlin: 1960–1990. LNMM Latvijas Nacionālais Mākslas Muzejs (Latvian National Museum of Arts), Riga, Latvia
• 1979: Film as Film , catalog for the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery , London, UK

Own publications

• 2004: Margaret Raspé, work 1970–2004, Tübingen and Berlin, Ernst Wasmuth Verlag . With texts by Walter Aue, Patrizia Bisci, Michael Haerdter, Christine Hoffmann, Herbert Lachmayer , Mechthild Rausch. ISBN 3-8030-3309-8 .
• 1982: Blue Blooming Columns and other texts. Margaret Raspé in the catalog Unbeknownst to Production Forms , NGBK, Berlin
• 1982: Interruptions: up stairs, down stairs . Margaret Raspe in: Aesthetics and Communication, Issue No. 47, Volume 13, 1982: Female Productivity .
• 1974 The films with the camera helmet , publisher: Berliner Filmcoop, Das Andere Kino. Edition of 100 in English, 100 in German, numbered and signed.
• Freiluft I , Freiluft II , catalogs of two exhibitions in the garden at Rhumeweg 26, Berlin, 1991. With texts and illustrations by Christine Hoffmann, Werner Klotz, Giovanni Niccolini, Ann Noël, Qin Yufen, Margaret Raspé, Otmar T. Sattel, and Peter F. Strauss , Nanaé Suzuki, Dagmar Uhde and Zhu Jinshi.

Publications about the work and the artist

• 1979: Film as Film , catalog for the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery , London, UK
• 1976: oh death, how scarred you are: film with a camera helmet . Helke Sander in Women and Film , No. 10, Rotbuch Verlag
• 1987: Musica da Camera . Palazzo Ruini, Reggio nell'Emilia, Italy
• 2014: Website for the film series Kino Arsenal and Weltkulturenmuseum Frankfurt / Main: http://www.madeleinebernstorff.de/seiten/raspe/programm.html
• 2016: Florida magazine # 2. A conversation between Florida and Margaret Raspé. / A conversation between Florida and the artist Margaret Raspé. (Maximiliane Baumgartner). Florida. An art space of the city of Munich, 2016. deutsch / english 168 pages.

Memberships

• NGBK New Society for Fine Arts
• London Filmmakers' Cooperative
• Berlin film co-op

supporting documents

1. ↑ "Every day again - let them swing! On the topicality of Margaret Raspé's films. ”18. – 21. September 2014, Arsenal Cinema, Berlin; 26.-28. September 2014, Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt / Main
2. ^ Art Association Braunschweig: Margaret Raspé & Clara Bausch, rear projection, August 9, 2017. August 24, 2017. Retrieved June 9, 2018 . 
3. ↑ moss guard at chiemseeart