WALTER SEIDL
untitled (Galotti)
b/w slide installation, 81 slides, 2004
untitled (Galotti) is a b/w slide installation dealing with various forms of "staging reality."
Upon invitation by the City Theater in Graz, the idea, which developed in the course of the project,
was to react on the production of the play Emilia Galotti by German playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
and its staging by Swiss director Gian Manuel Rau. Starting with photographs from the rehearsals and the
specific adaptation of a historical play in the present, the slide installation features the parallel
universe of a narration, which derived from the contents of Lessing´s play and the contemporaneousness
of a theatrical and personally lived reality. Apart from the actors in the play, the main protagonists
in the photographs are friends, whose social environment has been transformed into a stage set, and their
actions synchronized in accordance with the issues raised in Lessing’s play. The director’s decision to
include a monologue on Emilia Galotti by Nobel-Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek also transcends into the
artistic work and its reflection of the represented female characters.