#40: Rebecca Ann Tess

Rebecca Ann Tess’ practice is mainly based in the field of video and found footage imagery. Topics of interest have recently been queer theory as well as film and television history. Tess presents her latest video project, a trilogy that refers to certain stereotypes of character presentation in European and US film history:

Dad Dracula is Dead, 2009, 13:00 min
Dad Dracula is Dead looks back to the cinema of the twenties and thirties, a time of transition not only from silent film to talkies but also to an increasingly regimented film industry. Although censorship codes were relaxed after World War I, there was a concurrent tendency to establish new control structures to accompany the birth of film as a mass medium.

A Crime must be Committed, 2010, 13:00 min
The second part, A Crime must be Committed, deals with the crime and detective genre, with film quotes and television series from the 1920s until the early 20th century. This retrospective demonstrates how crime stories, constellations of protagonists, and their assigned roles are subject to change over time. They are the expression of evolving discourses where the relationship between good and evil is renegotiated each time within the context of a new social-political situation.

Home Time Show Time, 2012, 15:00 min
Completing the trilogy with Home Time Show Time, it arrives in the contemporary media landscape. The distinction between the private and the public is blurred as well as the sphere of the real and the fictive isnʼt easy to differentiate anymore. The video takes place in a room, which recurrently changes its function and appearance. From the living room in which friends watch TV and chat about, it transforms to the talk show TeleMilano.

 

Rebecca Ann Tess (b. 1980 in Annweiler am Trifels, Germany). She studied at the Berlin University of the Arts, Chelsea College of Art and Design’s London; Columbia University, New York and Staedelschule, Frankfurt a.M.Award winner of Villa Romana (2011) and the Atelierstipendium im Freilichtmuseum Hessenpark, Ann Tess´s works have been shown at numerous exhibitions including „Container“ Freilichtmuseum Hessenpark, Neu-Anspach (2013), „Home Time Show Time“ Galerie Figge von Rosen, Berlin (2012), „Open Studio 8“ Goyang Art Studio, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul (2012) and „Dad Dracula is Dead“ Nassausichen Kunstverein, Wiesbaden (2010). The artist lives and works in Berlin.