- David Vostell
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David Vostell.
David Vostell (born 10 October 1960 in Cologne) is a German-Spanish composer and film director.
Contents
Biography
David Vostell is the first child of Wolf Vostell and his Spanish wife Mercedes Guardado. His father and his father’s art have formed his view of the world from his earliest childhood onwards. The artistics movements of the 1960s and the early 1970s, as well as his father’s circle - people such as Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys, with whom he often sat together as a teenager - marked him deeply.
From 1977 until 1980 he made apprenticeships at the TV and radio station Sender Freies Berlin, as well as at the publicity agency TBWA in Frankfurt am Main. He worked an assistant cutter, as a film projectionist, in a photolab, in a photostudio and as photographer. In 1979, together with some of his former school mates, he made 36574 Bilder (36574 pictures), an experimental film in Super 8. In 1980 he shot the documentary Endogen Depression about the making of an environment by Wolf Vostell.
In 1982 he shot the short film Ginger Hel starring Mark Eins, founder of the band DIN A Testbild, and with the actress Panterra Hamm. The film tells a bizarre love story set in the Berlin underground movement. In Norse mythology Hel is the name for both the netherworld and its goddess. This allusion to mythology is conveyed in some scenes of the film by the roles of the actors as they blur into mythological figures. From his early short films onwards, his special affinity for music is in evidence. The film is marked by long, rhythmic passages of music, long shots and action and dialogue between the actors which are reduced to elementary scenes. This creates an idiom in which the music accompanies the scenes and is on equal terms with the images. In the years between 1985 and 1989, he produced 8 music videos.
In 1990 David Vostell directed the feature film The Being from Earth in Los Angeles. This feature, with German title Das Wesen der Erde, tells the fantastic story of a being/creature, a mixture between animal and plant, born out of the sands of the Mojave desert. The film title alludes mainly to this being born from earth, but it can also be seen as a metaphor. In its metaphorical sense, it could refer to the state of the planet Earth, to its being or to existence itself. Long camera takes, scenes which are designed to show the acting pared down to the essential, dialogues only as necessary and lots of music show his individual directing style, but often leave the cinema audience puzzled. After the premiere on 8 December 1991 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin, Lars Olav Beier wrote a review of The Being from Earth in the magazine Tip Berlin number 25/1991, the only one to be published. The film was a box office flop.
In 1992 the documentary Vostell 60-Rückblick 92 (Vostell 60-Review 92) about Wolf Vostell’s retrospective in Cologne was created under his artistic direction. The scant success of his film projects forced him to work as an art dealer from 1993 onwards. Since 1995 he worked on a series of drawings, sketching his cinematic visions, which led to the publication of the Sketch Book 95/96 and Sketch Book 97/98.
After Wolf Vostell’s death in 1998, David Vostell took responsibility for his father’s legacy. From 1998 until 2001 he organised the Vostell Archive and put it in chronological order.
Since 2002 David Vostell has worked as a composer in Spain. In 2003 he created the Sinfonía nº1, in 2004, the Sinfonía nº2 and in 2005 he composed El Universo es Música (The universe is music): 16 pieces of music to go with the video sequences of faraway galaxies transmitted by the Hubble space telescope. The digital information accompanying the CD shows 26 digital photomontages, visualising travel in time and the search for alien life forms in the universe in a concrete way. In 2006 David Vostell composed Fórmulas de la Vida (Formulas of life): 24 suites associated with 24 key words, such as birth, love and dream. The digital information accompanying the CD shows all 24 words as digitally visualised photomontages which are in directly linked to his compositions.
Style
David Vostell’s feature film The Being from Earth differs strongly from the conventional view of cinema. The Being from Earth, just like his short film Ginger Hel, is an extremely enigmatic film. It asks the question Why again and again, but very rarely comes up with an answer. The viewer's expectation of finding a clarifying, conventional narrative structure quickly gives way to the search for insight. But even this is difficult to find. Various interpretations of the action are possible and it is probably meant to be that way. The film develops its own obscure dynamic. The Being from Earth appears to invite the viewer to let themselves drift and to recognise perfection in life and in film as an impossible idea. The being in the film is extremely passive. It does not bite, nor does it eat or kill. In character it can only be compared with the being in Eraserhead by David Lynch.
David Vostell’s music videos are far from the technical perfection of music videos of the 1980s. His music videos are an experimental mixture of pictures and music. Blurred, uneasy and repetitive shots form a characteristic trait with a style of its own, which breaks with all conventions.
Filmography
- 1979 - 36574 Bilder
- 1980 - Endogen Depression
- 1982 - Das Porträt
- 1992 - E.d.H.R.
- 1982 - Ginger Hel
- 1985 - Homo Sapiens
- 1985 - Lost in Life
- 1985 - She is so nice
- 1985 - Tutila
- 1986 - Cabala Músíca
- 1986 - Blue way in
- 1987 - Blood and Cocee
- 1989 - Coma Amazonica
- 1990 - The Being from Earth
- 1992 - Rückblick 92
- 1992 - Bestia Pigra
Books
- 1996 - Sketch Book 95/96
- 1998 - Sketch Book 97/98
Discography
- 2003 - Sinfonía nº 1
- 2004 - Sinfonía nº 2
- 2005 - Fórmulas de la Vida
- 2006 - El Universo es Música
- 2007 - Influences
- 2008 - EEM/Erotic Enlightenment Mythologies
References
- David Vostell Biografía/Recopilación 1978-2008 by Michaela Nolte. Editors nivel 88.exe, ISBN 978-84-612-2941-3
- Lexikon des Science Fiction Films von Ronald M. Hahn und Volker Jansen, Heyne Verlag ISBN 3-453-11860-X
- Fischer Film Almanach 1995, Fischer Verlag ISBN 3-596-12762-9
- Filmjahrbuch 1995, von Lothar R. Just, Heyne Verlag ISBN 3-453-08130-7
External links
Categories:- 1960 births
- Living people
- 21st-century classical composers
- German film directors
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