PLANT LIFE & BAG O' BONES
Films, Installations, Performances, Residencies
Still from Plant Life Dir: CiCi Blumstein, UK / Germany 1998 - 2005 ... The Cable-Pulling Beds
An elusive creature roams through the remains of a 19th century steel cable works. Its movements trace the decay of spaces and machinery, capturing echoes and memories of human workings in this place.
Background
Plant Life is a poetic film document of the last moments of a steel cable works in the heart of my home town. Inside this 150-year old, long derelict site, the space makes its own statements and quiet transformations.
Plant Life was filmed at the former Gempt Steel Cable Works in Lengerich, Germany, during a 9-month residency in 1997 - 98. The factory site covered an area the size of three football fields, housing several huge factory buildings. Explored in the film are: the Forge, the Great Oily Hall, the Power House, the Steam Machines, the Root of the Chimney, and the Cable-Pulling Beds.
Stills from Plant Life Dir: CiCi Blumstein, UK / Germany 1998 - 2005 ... The Forge
All locations are internal spaces and were captured as we found them. In one scene, the Creature wears hair made from steel filaments. These beautiful, delicate filaments are the raw material for making steel rope. One last bale had been forgotten within the factory's grounds.
Stills from Plant Life Dir: CiCi Blumstein, UK / Germany 1998 - 2005 ... The Root of the Chimney
Almost everything you see in Plant Life was totally demolished shortly after filming. Left for a long time afterwards was a wasteland, with rubble mounds and a single wall still standing. Silent monuments, spaces for a new story...
Now
This new story began with the creation of a new arts centre, the Gempt Halle, built on the former factory grounds, and incorporating one of the old buildings, the forge. A full program of events, including music and theatre, art exhibitions and fairs, now animates the space.
Still from Plant Life Dir: CiCi Blumstein, UK / Germany 1998 - 2005 ... The Great Oily Hall
Plant Life has been shown at international film festivals & events such as the Lux Open Film Festival 2003 in London, and at Tabula Rasa, a large-scale urban projection event in Croydon, 2002. It is also part of Unbekannter Ort [Unknown Place], a sculptural video installation with two screens and rubble field, first shown in 2002 at Sensuous Structures, an exhibition of sensuous architecture at the East London School of Architecture.
Plant Life - credits
Written, directed, performed & produced: CiCi Blumstein
Camera: Lars Wahlbrink, Dieter Mueller
Edit 1998: Horst Rehder, Lars Wahlbrink
Edit 2005: CiCi Blumstein
Sound Environment: The Clear Collective / Testcard
THE BAG O' BONES PROJECT
Bone sculptures: flour, salt, water, heat
Above left: Dungeness Beach, 1995 Above right: London rooftop, 1996
Sculptures & Photos: CiCi Blumstein
I've always been drawn to derelict spaces. For me, this is where present, past and future intersect, making a playground for the imagination.
Plant Life is one of the first in the Bag O' Bones, an on-going series of works concerned with architectural space and the body. It is an international project exploring designed and natural environments through the human body, film and performance. It explores especially those spaces that are in radical transition, to reveal subtle resonances, memories and stories. For example, what does it mean to know and own a space on a physical level, to feel at home, or connected to a place?
CiCi Blumstein dancing Makeshift Body on scaffolding, Brighton.
Photo: Christopher Hornzee-Jones
The Bag O' Bones project seeks to develop this human experience of felt structure and body-space interaction and to feed it back into architecture, science, technology and engineering.
This investigation also extends into planetary space: the possibility and implications of a first hu-manned mission to Mars in the near future have had a direct and profound impact on my artistic practice.
Each Bag O' Bones work is a uniquely created response to spaces and people. The resulting films & performances record a history of physical change, in the way humans work, build and live.
Cement factory workers in the early 20th century, including CiCi's great-grandfather, August Kättker
Photo taken circa. 1922, courtesy Hildegard Matysiak
For more information please email: cici@ciciblumstein.com