Videoart at Midnight #55: Guido van der Werve

Nummer veertien, home, 4k video, 54 min, Greece, Holland, Germany, Egypt, India, France 2012

Nummer veertien, home, a multilayered and complex film, the structure of which is based on that of a classical Requiem: three movements and twelve acts. The film poetically interweaves tales of Alexander the Great, the death of Frédéric Chopin, and van der Werve’s own personal narrative. When Chopin died in Paris, his sister vowed to fulfill the composer’s wish of bringing his heart back to his native land of Poland; she succeeded in smuggling his heart out of France and carried it to Warsaw where it was interred in the Church of the Holy Cross.

For Nummer veertien, home, Van der Werve performed a 1,000-mile triathlon (swimming, biking, and running) from Warsaw to Paris – seven times the length of the Ironman Triathlon – retracing the path that Chopin’s heart travelled to its final burial place.

Nummer veertien, home explores themes common to van der Werve’s work, such as physical endurance, man’s struggle with nature, the crossover between history and geography, melancholy and the solitary – all presented in van der Werve’s surreal and deadpan sensibility.

A project by Olaf Stüber and Ivo Wessel

http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/nummer-veertien-home-saltz-2012-10/

Videoart at Midnight #55: Guido van der Werve
Friday, May 16th, 2014, 24:00

artists:
Guido van der Werve

venue:
BABYLON Berlin