Raphaela Vogel – In festen Händen (2016)

Raphaela Vogel (b. Nuremberg, Germany, 1988, lives and works in Berlin) plays the leading role in her performance-based films, which are often part of large installations. In these films she makes use of advanced editing techniques and the latest digital technologies, scanners, action cameras and drones. This approach is not a means to an end, but is itself the subject of the work, which focuses on the confrontation between physicality and technology. The drones and the other devices lead an almost autonomous existence in the films. This is Vogel’s response to our fascination for machines and our voluntary surrender to the digitally created reality of our modern experience industry.

Vogel makes her videos with mini-cameras that are attached to drones. This allows her to film completely independently and to be both the director and the actor. She depicts many different female role models and, through her emphatic control of female self-representation, she resists the male gaze, which is still dominant in the everyday world and in art.

The videos are accompanied by heavy metal soundtracks and are projected in multimedia installations, which consist of a wide range of elements, such as metal bars, ropes, torn cloths, damaged objects with an antique appearance and various items of animal origin, such as cowhides and pieces of leather. However, plastic dinosaurs and fragmented statuettes of horses also belong to Vogel’s arsenal. The materials evoke associations with mythology, death, relics, sacrifices and occult rituals, opening up an obscure and mysterious world.

For Hybrids, Vogel showed a recent work, based on the lion as a gatekeeper. However, instead of a proud and intimidating creature with its paw resting on a sphere, a pearl, the symbol of prosperity, power and eternity, Vogel shows two bronze lions attached to each other and hanging upside down on chains, like slaughtered cattle in an abattoir. The spheres are not pearls but balls and chains attached to the creatures’ noses by rings.

Instead of proud roars, a melancholy song played, a version of Hurra, wir leben noch sung by Vogel herself, originally a 1983 chanson by the Italian protest singer Milva. In the song, the singer, in keeping with the economic crisis of the early 1980s, speaks to a dejected individual, possibly her lover, but possibly the listener. The gist is: Don’t give up, we’re all in the same boat, the world is a hard place but be glad that we’re still here. Vogel shifted the song to the modern day, with a focus on climate change, wars, the apparent revival of the Cold War, increasing inequality between the sexes and races, and various ecological and social threats. With this work, Vogel pointed out the shaky balance of current power structures, while putting all of these threats into perspective as a woman. The sculpture, which weighs 1000 kilos, appeared intimidating but was also meant in a tongue-in-cheek way.