The recent work by photographer Rineke Dijkstra resulting from her time in Liverpool in 2009, entitled ‘I Can See A Woman Crying’, is a three-channel HD video installation capturing the dynamics of a group of pupils. Christian Hildebrand was appointed Dijkstra’s editor and camera operator, being closely involved in many of her ideas. A still of the video is shown above.

When filming ‘The Krazyhouse‘, also part of the recent series of work, Dijkstra got presented with the opportunity to work with the TATE Liverpool and bring an idea to life that she has had for some time.

Dijkstra wanted to portrait a group of children and study their individual personalities, their character within a group as well as the group’s overall dynamic. For the first time, she also introduces speech (including subtitles) into her work, which adds tremendous depth to the image and allows even more insight into the group’s behaviour. Shy remarks mix with a crescendo of a conversation and the three channel camera setup captures the moments in great detail.

The children are discussing the artwork ‘The Weeping Woman” by Picasso, which is in the TATE Collection. TATE Liverpool chose to exhibit Dijkstra’s work in the ground floor room as an introductory piece to their Picasso exhibition in 2010.

Having been premiered at the Max Hetzler Gallery in Berlin, the work continues to be on show around the globe, including the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York and Paris.

Follow the gallery links above to see an excerpt of the video and installation views.

Exhibitions and Reviews

     TATE exhibition.

     Max Hetzler exhibition.

     Frieze Art Magazine Review.

    Der Tagesspiegel Review.
    (in German language)

The recent series of work by photographer Rineke Dijkstra resulting from her time in Liverpool in 2009, entitled ‘The Krazyhouse’, is a five-channel HD video installation portraying five teenage clubbers in a sequence of five videos. Another videos has been released under the title ‘I Can See A Woman Crying‘.

Her successful video installation ‘The Buzz Club’, filmed in 1996 in Liverpool/UK and Zaandam/Netherlands, inspired her to return to Liverpool and invite teenagers to perform to their favorite songs in front of her eye and lens.

Christian Hildebrand was appointed Dijkstra’s editor and camera operator for the duration, being closely involved in many of her ideas. Two stills of the videos entitled ‘Phil’ and ‘Nicki’ are shown above (click to zoom).

Having been premiered at the Max Hetzler Gallery in Berlin, the work continues to be on show around the globe, including the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York and Paris. Follow the gallery links to see all video stills and installation views.

Reviews

Leslie Camhi appositely writes: “The work represents something of a departure for Dijkstra. [...] Yet it’s also a continuation of her great themes: the ungainly grace of youth, shadowed with doubt and in the first tentative flush of self-assertion. Dance, she finds, releases something in her subjects, and the moving portrait allows her to capture a more intimate reality.” (for NY Times Mag)

Follow these links to read the full reviews:

New York Times Magazine Review.                    Frieze Art Magazine Review.

      Der Tagesspiegel Review.
            (in German language)

Four video stills: The Buzz Club
Liverpool, UK/Mysteryworld, Zaandam, NL 1996-1997
© Rineke Dijkstra

In November 2008 Rineke Dijkstra was looking for a sound recordist to be working in Liverpool/UK on her newly planned video installations, now known as ‘The Krazyhouse‘ and ‘The Weeping Woman‘. Following his experience in sound and video production Christian Hildebrand was appointed sound and camera operator as well as video editor in post production.

A working relationship developed spanning much further than capturing the sound and image of the work, but resulting in a consistent team work and lasting friendship. For a media producer, who has been mostly occupied working in the music industry, being thrown into the deep end of creating these artworks has been a rather surprising change of scene and a steep learning curve.

Being at the center of capturing and editing of the two works, so close to the subjects and artist in the studios and on such highly creative level, has been very special.

So how do you write a blog about an artwork that can only really be experienced in real life? The reader will have to make the way to see the installations live, when exhibited in no less than some of the most famous galleries and museums in the world. Introducing Rineke Dijkstra as an artist and her previous work could be a way around this dilemma.

Rineke Dijkstra

Rineke Dijkstra is a portrait photographer, born in 1959, who gained international acclaim for a number of portrait series. Signature works include: ‘Beach Portraits’, ‘New Mothers’, ‘Toreros after the fight’, ‘The Buzz Club’ and ‘The French Foreign Legion: Olivier Silva’.

In these works Dijkstra’s subjects are presented against minimal background and the techniques in lighting and photography developed by her makes the images appear less colourful. Dijkstra further keeps an unemotional distance as photographer, that allow for the subjects to take the center stage, often revealing a feeling of insecurity during transitional periods in their life. “What interests me is that ambivalent zone where you almost lose control,” Dijkstra explained about ‘The Buzz Club’ video.

Kolobrzeg, Poland, July 26, 1992
Julie, Den Haag, Netherlands, February 29, 1994
Vila Franca de Xira, Portugal, May 8, 1994
Olivier, Quartier Monclar, Djibouti, July 13, 2003
© Rineke Dijkstra

Rineke Dijkstra and Liverpool

Following the success of her video ‘The Buzz Club’, which was filmed in Liverpool in 1996, she decided that a continuation of this artwork in 2008 and 2009 would reveal how the people of the city and young culture has changed. Liverpool has a reputation for it’s vibrant club culture. A prime spot to cast young people of many peer groups and portrait both.

Rineke picked up on this special atmosphere the City has just as much now as when she first came in 1996. She has an impeccable ability to pick a person out of a crowd, who may never have been filmed before, but will eventually allow insight into his/her distinct character through the eye of the camera and the photographer.

“The Krazyhouse” video installation

For ‘The Krazyhouse‘ a very hard process of scouting began and similar to ‘The Buzz Club’, the models – or better subjects – were asked to perform to music in a purpose build photo studio for the new series. What resulted from this process is a new piece, which seamlessly expands Dijkstra’s line of previous works.

In the opinion of the author of this article (!) this artwork is about beauty, the beauty of people, their character, their culture, the music and the movement.

During filming of the first project Rineke Dijkstra was able to work on another idea, which would involve working with school classes and portraying the individual characters and the group’s dynamics during a discussion.

“I Can See A Woman Crying” video installation

‘I Can See A Woman Crying‘ is an exceptional piece of video documentary and portraiture with striking vibrancy, that finds resemblance in Rineke’s portrait stills photography, but takes its notion much further. The viewer gets mesmerized by the sound and vision and can decide to follow the crescendo of a conversation between the children of the class.

Related Links

• Rineke Dijkstra at Marian Goodman Gallery NYC here»
• Read an interview with Rineke here»
• See a collection of signature works (Spanish art blog) here»
• English and German Wikipedia entries
• Google Search for Rineke Dijkstra here»

Recommended books … Additional reading

Rineke Dijkstra

Rineke Dijkstra (Photographer), 2005

The Photography Book

Ian Jeffrey, 2000

The record was a great pleasure to mix and I was given the time to fully delve into extending the sounds and creating rich and dense sound stages.

Richard originally planned to release another EP, but soon realised that he had plenty of material to fill albums and so he went off to Wales with producer Snorre Bergerud to track 11 songs. The diary of the sessions you can follow here.

Snorre’s work on the album let to colourful arrangements of Richard’s songwriting, which includes pop-rock and singer-songwriter aspects and a track inspired by electronic artist Fennesz.

Lightly played cymbal patters and exploding drums, lyrical and scratchy acoustic guitars and muted and distorted bass lines build the backing to Richard’s main vocals and harmonies. All harmonic sounds of the album are recorded using guitar sounds, largely extending the range of the ‘typical’ electric guitar sounds used in production.

I found myself creating sounds out of the source material, which would push the individual parts of a song further into their intended direction and see Snorre’s production vision to the end. By reamping nearly everything I was able to introduce a nice depth and harmonic ‘gel’ to the mix. I also continued with my new passion for reverbs, which already emerged when mixing the Alice Klar album.

Hopefully I will be able to put a few sounds of the record into this post very soon. Once again, I have been at Whitewood Recording Studio to mix the record, where I have setup all of my mixing and recording equipment as a residency for the foreseeable future.

The question of how and where to mix Alice Klar’s Record comprising 12 songs was more difficult to ask then what may usually be the case.

A vast range of ideas from different periods of songwriting was to be put together and the responsibilities of family life had to also take priority. It so proved as an advantage to some that the producer’s family got stuck in holidays because of an erupting volcano!

Mixing requires a lot of attention and I prefer the producers to be in the room if possible. Email, Skype, Server technology and the likes are great, but when the producer and/or artist is in the room, suddenly the arrangements get refined and added to, parts re-recorded and changed and everything is instant. That I think is really fun when mixing and this was the case with my close friend, producer and songwriter Christian Badzura of Alice Klar.

We started the mixes at The Chairworks, but ran into time constraints and the mixing process was put on hold. Meanwhile the songwriting continued and the break was actually of advantage, because some of the best songs were written then.

When it was finally time to finish the album, Chris Badzura and I thought long about how and where the budget would be spent best and the logistics of mixing it on a large frame console such as The Chairwork’s SSL.

Mixing at Whitewood

We wanted great flexibility and it needed to be happening in Liverpool for above mentioned reasons. It was then that I suggested to equip my own mixing setup to gain the ‘SSL-Sound’ and lock ourselves into Whitewood Recording Studio, located right next to Badzura’s production and songwriting room and 5min away from our homes.

I was confident that the results would be great and it indeed proved to be the best solution – with, well, great results. This sparked an ongoing working relationship with Whitewood, which is run by Rob Whitely and Danny Woodward, hence the name. You can read more about this here» .

The sound to the Alice Klar record

Moving on from the technicalities I would describe the sound of the Record as electronic synths pop including electronic synths pop ballads, which were a particular favorite of mine in the mixing process. My newly found love for reverb emerged mixing tracks such as ‘Don’t Turn Around’ and ‘Pagoda Red’.

Throughout the album I followed the concept of glassy or icy vocal sounds with clear reverbs accompanied by round Moog bass sounds and drum programmings. To state the obvious: it’s all about the bass!

We developed a steady workflow and Chris Badzura was able to improve the arrangements on the fly by adding and changing synths sounds, mostly discretely but with great impact. Mixing reveals those moments in a song where small additional parts can help the energies that influence the listener so much.

Hopefully I can add some tracks to this post soon.