Video Submission by Susanne Wawra
Susanne Wawra, Mental Asylum, 2014, Video, 7m 56s.
​
This piece is a modern take on confession, it opens up a secret, something that is far too often kept to oneself.
"Mental Asylum" explores personal identity in a very vulnerable place, a person's mind in the depths of mental illness. It is a recording from my admission into a psychiatric hospital with clinical depression. The piece provides access to the struggle of the self and the very core of identity when everything seems lost.
​
Access the video here: vimeo.com/96517983, Password: asylum
"Mental Asylum" is a confessional piece that deals with the self and identity. This is a very private recording that was not intended to be seen by anyone, while knowing that film by its very nature implies an audience. It taps into the emotional potential of real life and explores showing the real, without any cut or filter. It allows for an intimate analysis of the artist's confidential experiences and emotions.
​
"Mental Asylum" is a revelation of the private self, a record of the mind in ill health. Here, video is used as a device extending the boundaries of interior dialogue to include the audience.
Access the video here: vimeo.com/130430276, Password: westernhagen
Susanne Wawra, Sexy, 2015,
Video, 50s.
​
The lyrics of German artist Marius Müller Westernhagen's "Sexy" are raunchy and suggestive. This is heightened by using mouths of mature women, challenging the perceptions of sexuality and age.
The ​"Songlines" ​series of videos looks at placing short song lyrics into a real life context. The choruses of popular songs are spoken and the focus is on the mouth of the speaker. It invites the viewer to read the reenacted song lyrics closely or differently. The use of the mouth makes it close and personal, at times very intimate and adds a personalised interpretation of the spoken word.
Susanne Wawra, Out Of Tune, 2015,
Video, 45s.
​
​
​
​
​
Out Of Tune is a blackout poem that talks about the tensions of reality/life. The words in the Financial Times and my reciting of the poem transport a Weltschmerz sensibility. Working with The Financial Times, the experimentation with words relates to my practice of starting from material that already exists in the world instead of a blank canvas.
Access the video here:vimeo.com/158258027, Password: newspaper
Susanne Wawra is a German visual artist and poet based in Dublin, Ireland. Susanne holds a Master’s in English and Communication & Media from the University of Leipzig, Germany. After an exploration of business in an international big name company, she decided to swap a secure career for life as an artist. She graduated with a First Class Honours in Fine Art Painting at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland and won the Talbot Gallery and Studios Most Promising Graduate Award.
The human condition is a recurring theme in her work. Particularly, she explores memory and Weltschmerz through painting, collage and video. Her work has been exhibited and screened in Ireland and the UK, Germany, Italy and the United States.
Her work does not start from nothing, she draws from material already existent in the world. Susanne works in mixed media painting that incorporates photography as well as in experimental video.In her painting practice, she does not begin at a blank canvas. Instead, her pieces initiate from found and everyday material such as patterned curtain fabrics. With the surface already alive, there is no beginning or birth to the picture, instead it is all an additive process. In her video works, she has created poems from newspaper articles, focused on popular song lyrics and repurposed video diary entries.