Loretta Fahrenholz

The Stedelijk is showing the latest work of German artist Loretta Fahrenholz: Two A.M. (2016). The fourty minute film is based on the exile novel Nach Mitternacht (After Midnight) by Irmgard Keun from 1937 – a prophetic, blackly humorous novel about the rise of the Nazis. Two A.M. follows the interlocking private passions and crises of a group of people at a moment when the larger social spring is wound so tight it could snap at any time, changing everything. Fahrenholz’ screenplay and socio-fiction film presents frightening analogies to a contemporary world under the influence of surveillance, capitalism, and newly emerging fascism.

In the film punky, streetwise Sanna bridles at her aunt’s traditional ways. The Watchers, powerful information-obsessives whose unusual telepathic abilities and sociopolitical pretensions also get on Sanna’s nerves. But after she abandons the family home and her young lover for the city, her dream of a brilliant urban life quickly falls flat. Everyone there seems to be wrapped up in their own serial dramas: her half-sister Algin, in despair over a faded singing career, Algin’s depressive and love-obsessed partner Lisko, and Hedy, the splenetic, paranoid journalist. Sanna quickly acquires a problem of her own when her lover reappears in the city along with the unpredictable, sinister Watcher sisters. Sanna and her friends bounce from bar to bar towards a party that will bring everyone’s minor ennuis and compulsive intimacies together with unforgettable results.

Two A.M. is produced by the artist, Fridericianum Kassel and Kunsthalle Zürich.

In 2017 the Stedelijk will publish an artist’s book with Loretta Fahrenholz, in cooperation with graphic designer Bill Hayden.

More about the artist

Loretta Fahrenholz (1981, Starnberg) makes ‘performative documentaries’, often working closely with the actors and extras who perform in her work. The artist’s films are an amalgam of different film genres, fusing elements typical of the documentary with those of the disaster movie, and porno. In her post-cinematic films, Fahrenholz documents the contemporary reality that is shaped by collective fictions, staging, and media communication.

In 2015, the Stedelijk acquired the film Ditch Plains that Loretta Fahrenholz made in 2013, created in collaboration with street dancers and shot while hurricane Sandy tore through New York, as well as the photo series Europa (I and II) from 1996-2013.