PETER IS DEAD (PETER IST TOT)
Found Footage Video
HDV
German
15'
Amsterdam (NL)
2012

Peter is dead. Why do humans make puzzles? Does photography conserve memory? What is a good story? Why is one interested in the life of a stranger? How do you read a stranger?
This video consists of photographs which I found in the garbage bin of my house. The essence of a stranger's life was thrown away. I felt a strong urge to look at these pictures and to give them an order. A fictive biography based on analogue photographs tells the life of Peter the truck driver and barkeeper from West-Berlin, who could also have been called Klaus or Jürgen. Why were these pictures thrown away? Does Peter not deserve to be remembered? Or do we just want a good story?
https://vimeo.com/42204586

PETER IST TOT

MACHT NICHTS
Performance in public space
Intervention on LED-Screen at Gasometer Berlin-Schöneberg
Billboard
Photo (variable size)
free badges
2009-2012

The two seemingly simple German syllables „MACHT NICHTS“ appear and interrupt the flow of advertisements on Europe's largest LED-advertisement screen. For one night in February a 10-second "MACHT NICHTS"-spot was repeated every 5 minutes. Clemens Wilhelm's message "MACHT NICHTS" is an ambiguous German word play: on the one hand one can read it as a pacification ("It's no so bad, it doesn't matter"), on the other hand one could understand it as the imperative "Don't do anything! Make nothing! Remain passive!".

The absence of a sender enhances this ambivalence and makes it somewhat uncanny. Omnipresent advertisement strategies animate us every day to consume. A standstill has to be avoided at all costs, permanent action is demanded from us. Not only in the economy a standstill equals regression.

„Doing nothing" seems dangerous. However, many of us wish to finally "not do anything". Lastly, one could read "MACHT NICHTS" as a paradoxical meeting of the nouns "power"(Macht) and "nothing"(Nichts). A paradoxical couple with a full void of meaning that everyone will read differently. But the question remains: Does it not matter if we don't do anything?

MACHT NICHTS has appeared in different shapes: free badges which are handed out in exhibitions, a spot on an LED-Screen, and a billboard in public space. The final stage is an airplane banner flight over Berlin.
https://vimeo.com/40605478

MACHT NICHTS

Clemens Wilhelm
THE TOURIST
HDV, Video, 16:9
4.44 min
color
silent
Iceland 2011

A white naked man in the vast landscapes of Iceland. An ambiguous symbolic action somewhere between romanticism, tourism, fetishism, performance art and pornography: a man uniting with nature. The visual language of porno clashes with National Geographic and Caspar David Friedrich. Absurdity in the face of beauty. 

http://vimeo.com/30190123

THE TOURIST

JE CROIS QUE JE SUIS MALADE / I BELIEVE I AM SICK
HDV, 24’28’’, no sound, Espace Artcore, Maison Molière, Paris, 2009
(12' sample)

„Je crois que je suis malade“ was developed for the exhibition "wasistdas" at Espace Artcore, Paris. This show was held in the apartment where French playwright Molière lived. He died there in 1673 after a performance of his last play "The Imaginary Invalid", a comedy about hypochondria, health mania, belief in doctors, lack of attention and the public display of illness and ego. These very modern themes in combination with the special location were the background for Clemens Wilhelm's performance.
During the opening the visitors of the show individually entered a white room which was closed off with white hospital curtains. This room only contained a chair and a camera. The visitors were told to take a seat and speak the sentence "Je crois que je suis malade (I believe I am sick)" into the camera. For all other visitors and even for Clemens Wilhelm it was invisible what was happening behind those curtains.
The performance video is now presented as a lifesize video projection. It does not have sound which raises the viewer's attention to body language and facial expressions of the "sick" and enhances the theatricality and articificiality of the individual performances. The series of around 90 performances of the "sick" confronts the viewer of the video with a bizarre and comical doctor's or psychologist's consultation hour.

http://vimeo.com/26944265

JE CROIS QUE JE SUIS MALADE

I MET A GENIUS
Video
2'19''
2011

A poem by Charles Bukowski meets the Icelandic Ocean. A thought on beauty, nature and individuality.

http://vimeo.com/27340219

I MET A GENIUS

I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR
Video Performance
1'
Chongqing, China
2011

The artist enters a subway train in Chongqing, a mega-city of 32 million Chinese. His face is covered by a mirror which reflects the gazes of the other passengers. Two cameras film this short disturbing appearance.
The foreigner represents a distorted version of your own concept of life and self. The interest you can establish for the foreigner depends on your own capability to fill this gap between you with meaning. If you are curious about a stranger it is mostly likely because you want to learn something about yourself, not about the stranger him/herself. You see in a stranger's face what you project into it - just like when you look into a mirror.

http://vimeo.com/26437776

I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR

READ ME
Video Performance
HDV
Chongqing, China
Sound: Chinese with English subtitles
duration: 26'
2011 

For this video Clemens Wilhelm asked four Chinese fortune tellers to read his left hand. We only see his hand resting on a table and the hands of the fortune tellers touching certain areas as they read his hand. Their four off-screen voices tell about his past, present and future – his health, success, wealth, longevity and love life. 
By translating the lines on his hand into words they draw a portrait of the artist. Clemens Wilhelm sets the outer conceptual frame which integrates the fortune tellers into the process of portraiture. By only showing his hand he leaves the rest of the portrait to the imagination of the viewers, which fill in the missing information.
The performances of the fortune tellers are quite hard to categorize: on the one hand they are unreliable narrations, because reason tells us not to believe fortune tellers, but on the other hand they are a straight-forward diagnosis based on years of practice in this ancient tradition. 
In "Read Me" two hands touch and in this touch two cultures meet. The fortune tellers may be telling us Clemens Wilhelm’s life but they describe it from a Chinese point of view: their idea of a good, long, happy and rich life will probably be very different from the idea of a Westerner. So afterall this is a Chinese portrait of Clemens Wilhelm.
One is left with a strange feeling of indecision: should I believe them or not? Can you read all this from a hand? Can a stranger read you like that? How much does your surface, the shape and skin of your hand, reveal about yourself? How much is real and how much is your own projection? And on a more theoretical level: how much truth is in a portrait?

The video is usually presented as an installation. It is projected onto a table top.

http://vimeo.com/26962630

READ ME

THE ROAD TO VENICE
HD SLIDESHOW VIDEO PROJECTION 
16:9, 38'42''
MUNICH, GERMANY - VENICE BIENNIAL, ITALY
2009
(13' sample)

In July 2009 Clemens Wilhelm started out on foot to walk from Munich to the Venice Biennial. The path of more than 600 km took him across the alps in one month, from the Southern German lowlands across the high mountain ranges of the Alps and down to the Adriatic sea. Along the way he took a photograph of the road ahead every 15 minutes. These pictures blend into a slideshow video.

The German filmmaker Werner Herzog once said in an interview that if one wanted to become an artist, one should not spend years in art school but take a long walk alone with a camera. As his graduation project, Clemens Wilhelm undertook this long walk.

Walking south to Italy has a long tradition in European art history. Many north-European artists since Renaissance times have traveled to Italy to study the arts, and due to limited resources they often walked. Taking a long walk at 
the end of your apprenticeship also has a long tradition among other European craftsmen.

The Venice Biennial is arguably the most famous contemporary art exhibition in the world and it is considered a great honour for any artist to be showing there. But this road to Venice is long, unsafe and rocky. However, the challenge of taking on the real road to Venice shows striking parallels to an artist career. When just starting out as an artist, you may ask yourself: "Will I make it to Venice in the end?" But a whole mountain range separates you from that goal.

But Clemens Wilhelm's video is more than this: the process of walking, the everchanging road itself and spending time with yourself seem equally important as the goal Venice. The Biennial as a goal becomes secondary, as the viewer starts to walk with him, picture by picture. The viewer starts to travel in his/her mind on his/her own imaginary path through strinkingly beautiful mountain ranges, green fields and sundrenched forests.

http://vimeo.com/27557311

THE ROAD TO VENICE

HEIM
Video
15'
Northeim, Germany
2010

„Heim” is the portrait of a typical small town in Germany. 12 Citizens of Northeim were cast through local newspaper ads to tell their favourite jokes on their home couches disguised with animal masks. 
Jokes have a strong connection to the subconscious. They mostly serve the social need to establish a connection between teller and listener. If you can laugh about the same joke, you probably have the same moral, cultural or intellectual background. In various ways jokes discuss most common themes of society, such as it’s values, hierarchies, dreams, or mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. "Heim" leaves you with a strange uncanny feeling, somewhere between laughter and horror.

http://vimeo.com/24524800

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