Marieke van der Lippe | There is no 'PRIVATE' Marieke

‘Misschien dat een object een verband kan leggen, bewegend van het ene subject naar de andere, zich bewegend in een samenleving, een gemeenschap. Maar, aangezien relaties altijd ambigue zijn, gedachten zoveel gaten slaan als verbanden leggen, woorden zowel contact leggen als isoleren, gegeven het feit dat er een gat is tussen mijn idee van subjectieve zekerheid en de realiteit die ik vertegenwoordig voor de ander, dat ik altijd schuldig blijk terwijl ik me onschuldig voel.

Het gegeven dat de omstandigheden mijn leven van alledag veranderen, dat ik dan wel, dan niet communiceer...ik bedoel te begrijpen, lief te hebben, geliefd te zijn, en elk falen mij mijn eenzaamheid scherper doet voelen, dat...dat...dat...ik het niet op kan brengen de objectiviteit op te geven die me tegenstreeft, noch de subjectiviteit die me een buitenstaander doet voelen. Zoals ik nooit iemand kan zijn als niets, daarom moet ik luisteren, kijken; de wereld mijn bron.”

-Juliette Janson in ‘Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle’ (J.L.Godard)-



Mijn werk komt vanuit betrekking voort. Ik selecteer, reflecteer hetgene zich aandient en van daaruit handel ik. De camera is hierbij verlengde; ik begeef me ervoor, erachter en ertussen. Zoals de omgeving mij stuurt zo stuur ik die ook weer zelf: Geen eenduidige autonomie, maar initiërende autonomie, pogingen om iets wensen te zijn, het persoonlijke/sociale/politieke/artistieke vorm te geven.

Kunstwerken is een houding, is een activiteit. Het ontstaat in het veld tussen ik, ethiek en esthetiek en is een ontologie van het heden, het is een practisch engagement zonder waarheid, waarbij elke opdracht actief en naar een eigen inzicht wordt omgevormd.

Het ‘reële denken’ is hierin heel belangrijk, het kunstwerken behoort zich ook in die realiteit te begeven, en de frictie die dat veroorzaakt is er onderdeel van. Het reële denken is het verweven van dagelijks leven, het gevoel van schoonheid en het juiste doen, waardoor dat zijn, het individuele zich beweegt, in beweging is, zich in tussengebieden beweegt en beweging bewerkstelligt.

There is no 'PRIVATE' Marieke

(Text out of the Boijmans-Museum catalogue).

Piet Molendijk

Autobiographical art presupposes, in order of appearance, a self, a life, and a description of them. It is evident that every report is fiction, because choices are made in the form and the narrative perspective: facts of life are blown up or condensed. But that fiction is always coupled with a claim of truthfulness: this image conveys an impression of my life, reality is exposed here, hidden secrets are revealed. And moral criticism, always lying in wait, will not fail to expose that very concealment, the 'untruthfulness' and 'dishonesty'. There's no overlooking them, for reality precedes its staged representation. In my opinion, Marieke van der Lippe's film oeuvre puts paid to that idea once and for all; it sensitizes this work for a different, mediamatic experience of reality.

It is part of our everyday experience that every representation of reality is coloured, and that an uncoloured representation is impossible. This does not mean that we can only speak about reality in a subjective manner, but that we cannot define the border between what is represented and the representation itself, and that these terms have therefore lost their specific relevance. With the transparency of the medium as a neutral vehicle for representation or reality, reality itself has disappeared. And conversely, the medium has acquired a reality-producing or - the same thing - a fictionalizing power. The realisation that the medium cannot be distinguished from the 'mediafied' form is the leitmotiv in Marieke van der Lippe's films. It can be illustrated, for example, by the image and the position of the viewer.

The role played - sometimes quite literally - by the camera is an indication of the true purpose: to show what actually does the showing, not what is visible. What is visible does not happen somewhere and is then shown: visibility is a function of the screen and even of what is off-screen. The image does not show reality, but is reality: the Marieke on the screen is a 'self', an effect of 'mediafication'. The actual images do not claim to be original. Sometimes the camera passes from hand to hand, images are lifted from feature films or documentaries, distorted and re-used, new shots are added to random home movies (like the stripper in Let Love Rule), the actor casually taking over the camera as in the scene on the beach.

The quasi- or semi-live pictures problematize classical opposites such as true-false and reality-fiction with ease. manoeuvering the viewer into an odd position. Because total visibility and a revealing look at fragments of a life are suggested, because he is seeing an autobiographical film, the viewer can feel like a voyeur. Albeit in a somewhat different way, he can share the voyeur's kick, the excitement of being caught watching an intimate situation, unembarrased but furtively. He - but as we know, a she can sometimes be a he - is ignored as a voyeur, the image is not addressed to him. The effect is that the viewer is referred to himself, his voyeurism is confined to himself and he can enjoy his own dirty little secret. Or his vicarious shame, which he can always dismiss by sternly calling the film-maker to account.

What is special about these films? Our daily dose of reality and emotion TV has familiarised us with noisy hilarity, untrammelled randiness and embarrassing tears. The attempts in film catalogues to describe this work as home-docu-drama movies are all very nice, but not particularly illuminating. Employing the techniques of the mass medium TV, a personal statement is made that questions those very techniques and above all their imagery by exposing them and probing their limits. The realisation that no purity or authenticity is to be found beyond medium-specific mediation does not generate a sense of loss, but prompts an intense search, a probing of the innermost depths of our mediafied existence, in and with this medium.

The use of all the techniques and instances of mass media in an involved and thus personal manner, qualify this as post-medial, to borrow a term coined by the French philosopher Félix Guattari.

In her film, Vlaardingen, nine portraits of a town view, the portrayed inhabitants of the provincial town act as collective perceptions which permit the viewer to share the Vlaardingen effect. The nine-year-old Fleur, for instance, lugs the camera through the park past the place where she had a birthday party; she calls the war memorial 'a scary man'. Boy-friends, girl-friends, actors, passers-by and the artist were to be seen in earlier films. But whoever is in the picture, and in whatever capacity, they are always subordinate to their involvement in the situation. And this actual participation in the township's involvement as an effect of the film by saying: 'This is my Vlaardingen', makes this Marieke van der Lippe's most personal and by that token perhaps her most autobiographical film.