She shot in China, Japan and Mongolia, traveled to remote areas of the Arctic Circle, but the most tough section was the journey into her possess past. Following Ulrike Ottinger adopted the traces of her beginnings as a painter in “Paris Calligrammes” in 2020, when she remaining for Paris at the age of 20 for 7 college student-moving several years, she frankly admitted that it had been her most complicated journey. Despite the fact that all of her function is autobiographical, she has never ever been interested in hunting at the personal sphere. Remembering oneself, what an adventure.

From anyone who established out to have an understanding of the world and the ego in the earth: whoever fulfills her, the visible artist from Lake Constance with a Parisian pop artwork earlier and Berlin underground a long time from 1973, to which a exceptional characteristic film, documentary movie and Images profession followed, she experiences the identical, as inquisitive travellers. Either she reviews on her most current expedition or on the preparations for the up coming just one.

Operatic opulence

existence is travelling. At premiere functions or vernissages, Ulrike Ottinger roams from team to team with her fragile, girlish smile and casual (but tailor-designed!) trouser suits, just as she moves among the genres as a self-taught pioneer.

In the documentary, she results in the fantastic, vice versa, she drenches her fictions with reality, as in “Jeanne d’Arc of Mongolia” from 1989. Or she exchanges the operatic opulence of her gender-numerous films these types of as “Dorian Grey in the Mirror of the Tabloids”. the grandeur of nature and the gems of daily life, specially in her Asian movies.

She is normally drawn to faraway places, no matter if she explores the exoticism of her adopted home in West Berlin with her then partner Tabea Blumenschein in “Portrait of a Drinker” or invites us to discover the Arctic all over the Bering Sea for twelve hours in “Chamissos Schatten”. In acquainted surroundings, she will make out what is unusual, at the same time she provides forgotten parts of the environment closer to you. And she usually directs the camera herself, in 26 movies so much, many of them in XXL duration.

From time to time one particular could possibly imagine that Ottinger, this fearless and at the same time meticulously making ready explorer, is a determine from a bygone century, in the private scholar fashion of Adelbert von Chamisso and the feminist custom of Annemarie Schwarzenbach. As a curious collector, she is not in contrast to her French colleague Agnès Varda.

But Ottinger remains Ottinger, unmistakable, insatiable in the finest perception of the word. Her rhizomatic, rampant get the job done involves revues, collages and the experimental as perfectly as vacation experiences. With the result that her will work can not only be found at the Berlinale, but also at the Documenta and the Venice Biennale. She makes installations for museums and galleries, publishes photo publications, and usually has projects underway.

Treasures in the aged setting up

The base station for all her pursuits is her outdated apartment on Fichtestrasse in Kreuzberg. She has been living there considering that 1979, the place her treasures are gathered, image containers, slide scenarios, odds and ends, items for company, ritual weapons, bone carvings. Ottinger’s treasury not only reveals her passion for travel, but also the issues she has dealt with all through her lifetime: getting a girl and queer identities, injustice and colonialism, the peripheries of the world. Fundamentalism is alien to her, and she opposes ideologically slender points of watch with open perspectives.

Es There are quite a few explanations to rejoice Ulrike Ottinger on her 80th birthday this Whit Monday. Regular Ottinger: she asks her audience to be part of in the celebrations. The Kunsthalle Baden-Baden is exhibiting “Cosmos Ottinger” until June 19th, Ottinger retrospectives will run until the stop of the thirty day period in Vienna and Hamburg, and a 736-web site publication entitled “Between Worlds” explores her movies “in the mirror of transatlantic criticism “.

[Die Filmreihe “Happy Birthday – Ulrike Ottinger” läuft von 6. bis 26. 6., in den Kinos Arsenal, Delphi, fsk, Klick. Infos: arsenal-kino.de]

In Berlin, numerous cinemas are honoring her with a “Happy Birthday, Ulrike Ottinger” sequence. It begins on June 6th with the 50-minute poem “The Beguiling of the Blue Sailors” (1975) in the Klick-Kino, a wild production in which, in addition to Blumenschein, Valeska Gert and Rosa von Praunheim also surface. Ottinger will be a guest personally at the re-effectiveness of “Portrait of a Drinker” (1979) on Wednesday at the Arsenal.

At the stop on June 26th, the click on will show “12 chairs”. Jewel jewelry is hidden in one of the chairs, but which a single? The 3-hour treasure hunt takes you to Odessa and the Crimea, between other sites. Ulrike Ottinger drew her focus to Ukraine at a time when it was not however a country at war. It is about one of those ancient cultural landscapes in Eastern Europe that the West has shamefully overlooked for much far too lengthy.