Regen kommt und bleibt

Regen kommt und bleibt

(Rain comes to stay)

Site-specific video installation for the exhibition Anlagenstillstand, Museumswinkel Erlangen/ Germany (2002)

DV-PAL, color/sound, 15 min./loop
Material: video projector, speaker, shower curtain as projection screen, towel, pieces of clothing, cosmetics

[The installation was situated in the washroom of a former factory building. In the factory the washing and toilet facilities were only for men.]


Upon entering the former bathroom, the visitor sees a woman standing under the shower. Warm water runs over her skin. From time to time she says something, as though talking to herself. In front of the shower, a towel, shower gel and other articles have been hastily set down as if the woman had taken possession of the place as though it were a matter of course.

During the exhibition, the washroom is the passageway to the toilet, a public space, where the visitor can wash his / her hands. The installation transforms this public space into a private, almost intimate, zone.

The figure of the woman, filmed behind a translucent shower curtain at the same location and projected by a video beamer onto a further shower curtain, appears indistinctly. Both the woman's body and her language are naked. She speaks in unguarded words, spontaneous movements that don't make the effort of becoming a text: Fragments of sentences, strewn among the burbling of the water.