My first encounter with Julian Rosefeldt was during his exhibition at Dirimart in 2012. Back then we had a profound conversation concerning his creative process. His way of telling this process fascinated me. Now and then, whenever I see his works, all I think about is his process of creativity and the layers hidden in it. 
He told me while he was creating and producing he writes and read every day.  His urge to create videos with a desire for aesthetics makes his productions layered videos full of different themes. In fact, for Rosefeldt the creation process is very important. As a director, his aim is to blend contemporary issues with the everyday themes and reflect all of them in one video within a layered creativity process. His themes generally dive into gender inequality, violence, migration, and issues we encounter in our everyday life. 
In 2018, I had a chance to meet him on Skype and did a small, yet very enlightening interview on a process of creativity. Within this six-year, he has created many different videos, such as Manifesto and Deep Gold of which he becomes so successful and known with.  Since then his creative process has not changed and each video has its own story. His layered production process is a result of his layered thoughts. In fact, most of his story goes along with layers…  This reflects onto his works with channels of music, noise, and aesthetics. Thanks to these ‘channels’ the beauty of the scenes may appear incidentally cause Rosefeldt uses the camera with a common sense rather than a planned move.
‘Moving Image, I mean video art as we know it, has always been stuck between market constraints. That’s why I always asked myself what can I do differently and understood by everyone and also stay out of the classical movie production process. That’s why I work with deconstruction technique.’ he says. For Rosefeldt, being a director is almost like being a painter. Everything goes along with layers and new images come alive. That’s how new mythical images come out in videos. As a result aesthetical scenes emerge. In fact, Rosefeldt does not try to use his camera with a purpose to create a very aesthetical image or a scene. ‘I love to use the camera differently and this depends on my mood and my common sense,’ he says. 

 Deep Gold, 2013/2014, 1-channel film, B/w, sound, Shot on HD, Converted to HD-SR and transferred onto a hard disc player, Aspect ratio 16:9, Loop, 18, min 12 sec, Edition 6 + 2 ap. Courtesy of artist. 



A problem of stereotyping the immigrants
These very aesthetic images and layers can be seen in Asylum, of which one of the videos, Rosefeldt created with an urge to take on contemporary issues in our daily lives. In Asylum, more than anything we see his passion for creating a contemporary theme. 
‘In fact, all of my videos are usually about contemporary issues. What moves me is a thought or a question. As a result, this turns into a creative process and every related thing comes as one whole thing,’ he said. Asylum is a video that proves this process. Rosefeldt decided to take on the immigration issue while he was on holiday in Barcelona. In fact, his way of reflecting the migration problem is a bit limited in the European culture. Asylum is a video that proves how the European culture sees immigrants in their country. ‘In Europe, unfortunately, how we see immigrants always depend on certain jobs they have (as if they all need to do this job). For example, all Turkish immigrants are cleaning ladies, the Chinese are working in Chinese restaurants and so on… My aim in this video is to show how this point of view separates them from their individualities, while I try to reveal how society sees them.’ 
In Asylum, a viewer sees immigrants not as they are, but how European culture perceives them. That’s why Rosefeldt makes immigrants act as how the society sees them, women with headscarves vacuum-clean a cactus garden; Asian cooks sit in a monkey house, tearing up the Styrofoam packaging of takeaway food; a pile of newspapers that have been stacked and restocked by paperboys is whirled through the air by a giant türbine…  Rosefeldt once again uses his camera as a way of hypnotizing effect and we see every detail as a ritual.
In fact, the film is from 2000 and 2001 and looking the same works from today’s world – full of so many migration issues- this point of view comes with lots of questions in sociological stance. ‘I want to review how different cultures look at each other.’ According to Rosefeldt, contemporary societies are like a kaleidoscope and he said he likes to reflect this on his works as he creates a mosaic out of this. 
Creative process of Deep Gold and Manifesto
Manifesto is the most popular video of Rosefeldt. On the other hand, Deep Gold may be the most interesting and beautiful work of the artist.
Deep Gold is an homage to Luis Bunuel. He created Deep Gold to remember Bunuel’s unique artistic style. The main character in Deep Gold looks the same with the main character in L’Age D’Or movie of Bunuel, says Rosefeldt. 
While Deep Gold takes on gender inequality, Rosefeldt in this video aims to leave all the gender clichés on a side and creates a world with more freedom for women. Doing this he focuses on women sexuality. While writing the script Rosefeldt had hard times. ‘The creativity process always comes with a long research and days of reading. But Deep Gold’s was really long.’ While researching for Deep Gold the main idea behind Manifesto appeared to Rosefeldt and that’s when he decided to create Manifesto. Rosefeldt says, the creative process always proceeds like this: One idea comes with another one. 
Ecriture automatic  (Automatic writing)
For Deep Gold Rosefeldt had the main idea but he had a hard time writing the scenario. ‘At last, I decided to write with a subconscious mind. I write whatever comes to my mind without any limit. This is called ecriture automatic. And with this, the script came out: A woman enters the scene and pees on the road. Maybe this has nothing to the with the sexuality but still, this is close to my subject.’ 
Deep Gold is full of provocative images and tells us about a world where women own their sexuality, rather than denying it.
Manifesto, 2015, Part 2 of 13-channel film installation, Colour, 2-channel sound, Shot on HD, Aspect ratio 16:9, Loop, 10 min 30 sec. Courtesy of artist. 
Imprisoned in the art gallery
Maybe, Manifesto is another video that arouses questions of gender issues. In this video, Rosefeldt works with Cate Blanchett. ‘We met a few years ago and we decided to work together and a few years later I came up with Manifesto.’
Manifesto in a way mocks with art and artist manifestos. On the other hand, maybe,  it is a reflection of woman existence in society. Blanchett, in this 13 channel video work, appears on the scene with 13 different characters. Each character reads a different manifesto. Sometimes we see her as a rock chick and sometimes as a conservative housewife. Commenting on working with an actress like Blanchett, Rosefeldt said: ‘After Deep Gold, I have thought about how to reach the wider audience and that’s how I decided to work with an actress like Cate. Of course, this comes with a risk. The work might have been shadowed by Cate’s talent and fame, however, it did not happen and everything runs in its course.’ 
According to Rosefeldt, creativity process starts with a very fragile moment. On the other hand, he thinks we should not exaggerate creativity and he reminds me words of Jim Jarmusch: ‘Nothing is original.’ Rosefeldt says: ‘Each idea follows each other and there is no genius brain. We create and inspire from things we have experienced.’

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *