apartment of artder kunst

Birthe Blauth 

(b) 1969

Doctorate in Chinese Studies, Ethnology and European Art History at Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. Specialist area: iconology, mythology, religious anthropology.

WORKS IN PUBLIC COLLECTIONS AND BUILDINGS

PRIZES AND AWARDS

SHOWS (selection)

The Running Dog

The works of concept and video artist Birthe Blauth question our perceptions and ideas of reality. In 

The Running Dog exhibition at the ‘apartment of art’, she presents some new works, developed in 

2014-2015.

Her video animation work Merry-Go-Round focuses on the construction of reality through words. The 

observer is circled by an endlessly revolving room with no door. The room, an office, is in an unusual 

state of order or disorder and contains a bizarre constellation of objects. The walls end at the top 

simply in grey and look as though they have been torn off. Could this be where reality suddenly ends? 

Or is it the grey that’s reality – the reality we ignore? As the video progresses, the names of some of 

the objects appear, drawing our attention to them and giving them some kind of order, highlighting 

them – possibly even making them real? With each turn of the room, however, the objects are named 

and categorised differently, and the more they are named, the less we perceive the room (i.e. reality?) 

itself. In the end the film shows only the names, leaving observers to add in the images themselves. 

Throughout the film a barrel organ plays in the background, repeating its melody over and over, 

sometimes playing slightly out of time, out of tune and, at times, even ridiculously wrongly.

The installation Tea with Madeleine refers to the madeleine episode of Marcel Proust’s In Search of 

Lost Time. In this scene the taste of a madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea catapults the narrator 

back into a long-forgotten chapter of his past. The present moment is never experienced in isolation; 

far more, everything we see, hear, smell and taste brings back fragments of the past which change the 

way we view and experience the present and our current reality. A single trigger brings to mind 

different relics of the past in different people. This sound installation presents a conversation over tea 

in which both speakers are presented with the same stimulus words. Each one to drifts off into a very 

different world as they follow the word. Their paths then cross again and the next stimulus word is 

presented, causing them to drift apart again.

The images in the Moments series symbolise the way different layers of time fuse simultaneously and 

mutually with each other in our experience. They are reminiscent of those we see in dreams, images 

that feel real to us as we dream them but which we reject as unrealistic when we are awake because 

we are ignorant of the way the realities of different moments merge in our current experience. 

The Running Dog is an architectural ornament that brings together the themes of the three other 

pieces. A continuous piece spans the width of every wall of the room, it represents a rounded ‘wave’ 

motif, which was especially popular in Greek antiquity. It symbolises eternity, the repetition of the 

same thing at different points in time. Or even at the same time. Perhaps everything goes in rounds, 

unchanging, with only minor modifications that we do not notice. The piece is both labyrinth and 

eternity, the same, unapproachable reality, created by words, changing, concealed, constructed, 

structured. And without these words, it’s just a Running Dog.

On show in this exhibition:

 Merry-Go-Round, 2015, projected video animation, 12:15 mins.

 Tea with Madeleine, 2015, sound installation, 4:30 mins, consisting of a table with a pot of lime 

blossom tea, two cups, a plate of madeleines, two stools and two pairs of headphones. Dialogue: 

voice 1 in the right ear, voice 2 in the left.

 Moments, 2015, two images from the series, 120 x 70 cm, Fine Art Prints on hand-made paper, 

140 x 90 cm

 The Running Dog, 2015, 17 x 2100 cm, architectural ornament running around the walls just 

below the ceiling.

• 
  Merry go round; Video loop
  Exhibition View; Der laufende Hund
• 
  Tee mit Madlaine, Moments
  Exhibition View; Der laufende Hund
• 
  Tee mit Madlaine
  Exhibition View; Der laufende Hund
• 
  Tee mit Madlaine, Moments, Merry go round
  Exhibition View; Der laufende Hund
• 
  MERRY-GO-ROUND
  2015, animated HD video, 1-chan- nel, 12:13 min, 2015
• 
  MOMENTS 1
  2015, 140 x 90 cm, fine art print on laid paper
• 
  MOMENTS 2
  2015, 140 x 90 cm, fine art print on laid paper
• 
  DRIFTWOOD
  multimedia installation 2011 - 2014, installation view, UNPAINTED me- dia art fair, Munich 2014
• 
  WHITE NOISE PAINTINGS
  2013 / 2014, digital paintings on canvas, installation view
• 
  WHITE NOISE PAINTING
  2013, 130 x 200 cm, digital painting on canvas
• 
  THE GIFT
  2011, interactive HD-video instal- lation Installation view 532 Gallery Tho- mas Jaeckel, New York
• 
  TRAPPED
  2011, HD video, 1-channel, 27:07 min
• 
  ADAM & EVE
  2009, 14-channel animated 4k video installation and secret perfor- mance
• 
  THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE
  2010, Interactive installation for two places with twice video loop on monitor (26:21 min), security came- ra, black box with orange cotton
• 
  HAMLET‘S MILL
  2014, installation with 24 days performance WHITE NOISE PAINTING 2013, 130 x 200 cm, digital painting on canvas ADAM & EVE 2009, 14-channel animated 4k video installation and secret perfor- mance 
• 
  HAMLET‘S MILL
  2014, installation with 24 days per- formance, midnight view outside
• 
  REFLECTIONS
  digitally made from 2000 photos, printed on glass, mounted on 6 walls, Permanent installation across five storeys of the House of St John building in Saarbrücken, Germany, 2011