tulipa

Karø Goldt´s video tulipa, like the previous films in her abstract plant-film series, concentrates on the formal interplay of color and sound. For this, Goldt once again uses a digital flower picture as the starting point for her cinematic conversation. The picture is disaggregated into its color components and then transferred to an abstract stripe pattern. Thus, in tulipa, too, not much remains of the romantic genre of the flower picture other than the title and the electronically scanned color values of the original picture. Instead, the color dynamics of the picture are released from the flower motif and gain powerful intrinsic value through the consistent process of abstraction. The dynamic interplay of the color values and the spatial potential of the colors are thus revealed increasingly over the course of the color changes in the film.

Goldt combines this elementary dimension of film colors with electronically distorted guitar sounds from the band pumice. With tulipa, she thereby once again hooks up with the discursive field of synaesthetic perception, or rather, visual, cinematic music. Visual dominance is effectively transformed into an equality of sound and image. Yet, for this to occur, sound must also show a potential for abstraction similar to that displayed by color: for that reason, at the center of this sound is the dismantling of sound to noise rather than harmonies and chords. The scratching noise of a plectrum moving along a string brings to mind what Roland Barthes, speaking of the human voice-body, called the "granularity of the voice". Goldt translates these thoughts within the cinematic machinery and, in doing so, opens a view of the medium´s potential for sensuality.

(Marc Glöde)


This film is part of a series of abstract works about flowers in which three different themes are united: my passion for classic oil painting, my passion for flowers, and my passion for music. My work is an attempt to find a modern form for still lifes with flowers, one that includes movement and sound, and incorporates the tradition of meaning and content.

(K.G.)