DIVA
The voice of Maria Callas soars in a black space. With a zoom out of the black of the diva’s mouth, her lips start closing in around the black projection screen, her voice fading. Accelerating from an initial slow motion, the banal magic of the documentary footage incubates the screen. The diva accepts her applause with flirtatious ease, bows and closes her eyes. Fade to black. From the inside of the diva the performance starts anew. The voice of Maria Callas soars in a black space.

Using just a few seconds out of a film documentary of Maria Callas on stage, the video piece DIVA stretches the material in time into the stillness of its components, and also in space by a strong zoom that separates voice from body. The work explores the immersive voice of the diva as a mediator between her body and our own, between the visible and the invisible.

Katarina Matiasek, 2004


VIDEO
Katarina Matiasek

AUDIO
Scanner

ANIMATION
Martin Putz

zkm.de
photos © Franz Wamhof/ ZKM Karlsruhe