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ELEKTRA 1001

a film by Alena Meier and Wladimir Winter
2005
DVD
duration 10 min

Textfragments from:
Aischylos (Cerophei)
Hugo von Hoffmannsthal (Elektra)

The main character of this video is the stove "Elektra 1001". In August 2005, "Elektra 1001" shared a one-room-flat with the artist Wladimir Winter, his wife, and Alena Meier in Moscow. During the few days remaining before Alena Meier's flight back to Berlin, she worked with Wladimir Winter on a video about the classical drama Electra, whose plot could be paraphrased (superficially) as the female version of the Oedipus story. Based on the photographs Meier and Winter took in Moscow, and on the many email conversations held afterwards, the actual film consists of single digital stills. The interjections quote from Aischylos' and Hugo von Hoffmannsthal's Electra's.
According to the Aristotelian rules, the pictorial part of ELEKTRA 1001 maintains the unity of action, time and space: Within one day, the entire tragedy unfolds in Winter's kitchen, on his stove. Electra, Orest (her brother) and Klytaimnestra (their mother) appear as little match- and apple-figures, while the audience, i.e. the wall paper's pattern, never ever leave the room. A thunderstorm rises, the sun goes down, and the stove finally burns itself.
(Bettina Carl)

     
   
 

Morning

      Elektra
         
             
       
          Agamemnon killed while bathing
       
          Eyelids of Clytaimnestra
       
          Clytaimnestra's nightmares
       
          Orestes
       
          Orestes slaughters Clytaimnestra
       
          Gorgons arise from Clytaimnestra's blood

       
  Gorgons follow Orestes       Elektra dies at the hight of her triumph