LYNNE MARSH
RIVERSIDE PARK
Plänterwald is filmed on the site of a former German Democratic Republic amusement park built in 1969 and abandoned after unification. Its rollercoaster and ferris-wheel sit motionless at the edge of the city of Berlin. After being closed to the public for almost a decade the rides and fairground structures─once providing a distraction from everyday realities─are left to a gradual process of decay and overgrowth. Paradoxically this derelict site is patrolled and protected by security guards who on the one hand attempt to maintain its separation from the public sphere and contemporary life yet on the other hand position it in the present social and economic conditions.
The video stages a journey in, over and through this bordered off park evoking the exceptional conditions of its persistent existence. Positioning the security guards as the guardians of a ‘dead’ space, the work plays on the absurdity of the use of force and notion of property in relation to the decay and obsolescence of the site. Plänterwald pursues an exploration of a world held together by an internal logic, and quietly, yet relentlessly—like the defunct rollercoaster—echoes the rumbles of deep social and political fault lines and their explosive potential.
Lynne Marsh
Plänterwald, 2010
HD video installation, single-channel video projection with 4-channel sound, raised wood screen construction
17:50 min.
Photos: Devon Lindsay