Catalogue > At random

Films end. Biographies end. Life goes on. Can we break this law? Clarissa Thieme takes a stab at it. In "Was bleibt | Šta ostaje | What remains / Re-visited" (2020) she travels to certain cities and villages in Bosnia Herzegovina. She takes a single shot in each of the places where countless people have been raped, tortured, and murdered during the Bosnian War. Ten years ago, Thieme had been there already. "Was bleibt | Šta ostaje | What remains" (2009, 2010 world premiere at Berlinale) showed these places without accompanying words. Each of the images questioned: Does the location give testimony to the horror, or does it stay silent? Ten years later everything is different, or is it? In each of the places Thieme and her film team unfold a life-size transparent with a still from the preceding film from 2010. Sometimes this comparison of ‘now and then’ is simply a silent act of recognition. At other times it sparks conversation. Some are evasive, some full of lived-through memories. Who died where, is one of the questions. Who left to build a new existence elsewhere; who stayed; who returned – are some of the other. Between the lines and between the images it becomes clear: these topics haven’t been processed yet. And, how could they? It is difficult enough to keep on living. At the same time the filmic intervention prompts a reaction: In front of Thieme’s camera momentary public spaces arise. The old images provoke exchange. This exchange takes the form of what the reacting people are giving it. The film does not unravel mysteries – it is doing something mysterious: It dives into a space between remembrance and continuation and interlocks retrospection with the present. The void is everywhere. And Thieme’s film is never finished. On the contrary, it proves that there is a chance to act through film that persists. To be continued. (Jan Verwoert)

Clarissa Thieme is an artist and filmmaker. Working across film, photography, performance, installation and text, she combines documentary and fictional forms focussing on processes of memory, politics of identity and strategies of translation. Her practice is research-based and often takes a collaborative approach. Thieme studied Media Art at the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK), holds a MA in Cultural Studies And Aesthetic Practice, University Hildesheim and is research alumni of the Berlin Center for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences (BAS). Thieme's work has been exhibited and screened internationally and is available at Arsenal Distribution Berlin and sixpackfilm Vienna, as well as part of Video-Forum n.b.k. Berlin, blinkvideo, Hamburg and DES'T / district, Berlin.