Stille Helden (Silent heroes)

06.02. bis 07.05.2012
Ephemerals
Zeppelinmuseum Friedrichshafen

Ink-jet prints treated with linseed oil, writing from earth and stone pigments, Stille Helden Video, 5:00 Min., 2012

Historical images from the Zeppelin plants and of journeys made by airship show people going about their daily routine: workers building metal constructions, sewing fabric outer shells or carrying out tests with mixtures of gases, machinists, ‘cell carers’, radio operators and personnel working in the restaurant, bar or service sector during flights. The printed photographs from the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH’s archive inventory were treated with linseed oil.

The top layer of the images is now badly worn; the base is transparent. Integrated almost incidentally between the technical exhibits and the art collection, the images appear as slowly fading memories of a mythical time.

Dates and figures, noted on the floor with earth and stone pigments from their respective countries, make reference to the global locations accessed by the airships: fragments that have lost their context and which, too, will disappear over time, just as those who worked on and in the Zeppelin have done.

At regular intervals, portraits of these people appear in a video. Incorporated in to a hand-held tracking shot taken over the Tempelhof field in Berlin – where, with Schwarz’s airship, the chapter of the Zeppelins once has stated – the images give room for associations and projections. A network of silent references is stretched across the rooms of the museum and immediately makes experienceable the transience of history and lives once lived.

Ephemerals.
Winfried Stürzl, Curator of the exhibition, Conzept of the exhibition.

Many thanks to:
Archive of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH, Frau Waibel, Herr Flühmann und Frau Nustede,

© 2012 Image and text: Winfried Stürzl & participating Artists
Photocredits Stille Helden: Barbara Karsch-Chaïeb
Rightsof the images: VG-Bildkunst Bonn