BILDER MEINER GROSSMUTTER

Valentina Alexander

← Winter 2020/21

© Valentina Alexander, 2021

Valentina Alexander

BILDER MEINER GROSSMUTTER

BA final project

12:38 min, Stop motion animation, 2021

“Bilder meiner Großmutter" is a video-portrait of my grandmother Beate Priolo, a media artist who was predominantly active in the 80's and 90's.
The film is an homage and showcases her work, personality, and living space through stop motion animation. My grandmother worked with mediums which were, at the time, considered “everyday tools", such as Polaroid, Xerox, and handheld video cameras. In this vein, I used a current era 'everyday tool' as a tribute to her creative process. The film consists of 593 Polaroids. With an iPhone, I initially shot stop-motion portrait sequences of her, and then printed them all as real Polaroids with the Polaroid Lab printer.

Her Polaroid works have especially fascinated me my whole life. She has made hundreds of series- many of which portray a sequential movement. As a child, I watched my grandmother organising her Polaroid series into meticulous orders and creating visual narratives by doing so. Now as an animator, I set out to put her Polaroids into motion. Through this, the film is a creative dialogue between two generations of media artists.

© Valentina Alexander, 2021