Agnes Meyer-Brandis.

The Moon Goose Colony

Date: 2011
Lenght: 20:56 min.
Format: 16:9
Specifications: Colour, Sound, Single Channel
Courtesy the artist
 

“THE MOON GOOSE ANALOGUE: Lunar Migration Bird Facility”
by Agnes Meyer-Brandis was commissioned by The Arts Catalyst and FACT, in partnership with Pollinaria.
„The Moon Goose Colony, P1“ is a Pollinaria project by Agnes Meyer-Brandis.

Does the Moon-Goose exist? A special species of duck, the only one which has the ability to fly to the moon?
Agnes Meyer-Brandis records how a generation of moon-geese are raised, from when they hatch till they are fully fledged. In doing so, she takes quite literally a novel written by Francis Gordon in 1603 in which he writes about geese which can fly to the moon. The twenty eight chapters of the “Moon Goose Colony” are a methodical document of how the young geese progress. In the role of goose mother, the artist teaches the goslings not only the basics of life but also, dressed in a space suit, trains them as astronauts. The film’s commentary, based on the modern text and in scientific jargon, is spoken by a male voice. The seriousness of the speaker, and of the young artist who rears her goslings lovingly, is contradicted by scurrility of the pictures which show the interaction of person and animal, quasi-academic recordings and the use of instruments from space flight. The images consistently undermine the attempt to set up a situation which would do justice to a scientific experiment.

Nahin Aydin

Interview:

► 1. Your work has been chosen among over 2000 festival entries to participate in VIDEONALE.14. In which context do you prefer to present your work, festival/cinema context or exhibition? And what kind of difference does the respective mode of presentation mean for you / your work?

Exhibition context - its more timeless - the visitor can come and go, get lost in the video or not, decide by themself how long they want to watch the video the video itself can also be perceived as an image - a moving image.

► 2. Art can be seen as a mirror that registers and reflects life or as a tool that transforms it. Is there a particular theme, concept or problem your art addresses the most?

My art works are investigating our constructions of reality - what and how we form our world and in the end - what do we belief - an artistic research on the quest for a degree of reality within constructions.

► 3. In which way is the video medium an excellent possibility to express your intended subjects, especially in contrast to other media you use? Or do you work exclusively with video?

I work with many different media and materials, depending on each project and its ideas and necessities, one main material is video as i use it to document experiments, a witness, a tool and method to collect sense data and explore remote realities, such as the iceberg-probe, a scientific and
artistic tool in the same time, to gather research material, express images and visions, to tell stories, ... video has many many possibilities and its a timebased medium,. it can be purely visual but also very informative in the same time, ... it is a tool for me as well as an expression and reality of its own. For example the video "Moon Goose Colony", which will be presented at the VIDEONALE.14 is part of large project and longterm experiment and you can get an impression under www.ffur.de/mga

► 4. If you have the chance to ask the visitors of the VIDEONALE.14 exhibition questions about your own work, what would be your question?

Do you have a big meadow and would you like to adopt and take care for some moon geese?
 

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“THE MOON GOOSE ANALOGUE: Lunar Migration Bird Facility”
by Agnes Meyer-Brandis was commissioned by The Arts Catalyst and FACT, in partnership with Pollinaria.
„The Moon Goose Colony, P1“ is a Pollinaria project by Agnes Meyer-Brandis.