Review of Weihnachten
By Nadya Ostroff

Peter Remke's performance art video Weihnachten manages to capture the ambivalent feelings of remembering. There are all the unanswered questions that stubbornly refuse to vanish but become louder and darker as time wears on.

As a 'perfect' family scene is projected onto the torso of a grown man, we start to ask ourselves not only questions about the relationship between the film, the family and the man but our own relationship with our own pasts. The darkness surrounding the subject emphasizes his lone figure, but is he lonley or even alone? Is he free at last from the ghosts of Christmas' past or chained to those memories forever? Liberace's music stresses not only the past in terms of nostalgia but also the entrapment of false facades, mirrors and illusion.

As we record our family and friends on social occaisions for prosperity, what games are we playing, what lies do we want to export to the future?

Though the piece is so highly personal, Remke immediately turns the miror so we face our own childhoods and think those unanswered questions. We cannot escape ourselves.

Nadya Ostroff is leader of MA Audio History Theory at the University of Westminster. Previously Choreographer and Ballet mistress with the Mosjoen Ballet Company, Norway. Currently working on filming the physical theatre project Girl for Film Four.