Sabine Schirdewahn
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This text-image work has been published in the book Stars: Annäherungen an ein Phänomen, Fischer Publishing Frankfurt, 2002. Editors: Wolfgang Ullrich, Sabine Schirdewahn
“This book (Stars: Annäherungen an ein Phänomen) is about the ingredients of cults of stars and personalities in today's society - and not in a scientific way at all. Apart from the question of what a 'star' actually is: how does their cult develop, in what forms, with what periods of decay, rituals of remembrance and chances of revival? The answers are combined into an ethnography and archaeology of the media society in concrete case and image examples. Different perspectives, approaches and interests come into play in these "approximations". Images are obviously given a lot of attention and space. From the content: The artist as the archetype of the star; What the manager-star learns from this; How do stars actually disappear and how do they return?; Fame, relics, the memorials of the stars; The doubles of the stars; The pursuit of stars: stalking; The intellectual/philosopher as star.”
The contribution The Famous in Us uses text fragments from literature, specialist literature, film dialogues, conducted interviews and images to examine normality at the interface to delusion, which is about losing one's own identity.
There were some films in my youth that were formative for me. I still remember them today. They moved me - back then. They touched something in me. In The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), the main character, played by Jody Foster, weirdly mirrored my feelings of loneliness and isolation. I had identified with this girl, had wished to be as strong as she appeared to me in the film. A poster of her adorned my room at the time and friends asked me if that was 'me'. That irritated me, but it made me want to continue following Foster's career. Even now, years later, when I'm still sometimes compared to her, I remember and the emotions of an absent, past time become present again.
Das Berühmte in uns PDF (de)