The Wind on the Heath, and the complimentary video artwork The Mountain Stream (not pictured), explore the surface materiality of online-streamed videos and intervene in their function as a medium of communal historical memory. Each video work visually remixes and rescripts a famous German Heimatfilm (homeland film) from the 1950s.
“Addressing angst originating from within, the hauntingly cut video works take classic German films and rescript the charming source material into something darker. Using only the original footage, Walsh uncovers a hidden memory buried deep within. The Heimatfilm is a genre within the German speaking regions, popular in the late 1940s, always taking place outdoors or in the wild. The films espouse the values of love, family, and idyllic life lived away from the city, forming an escapist reality of Romanticism, in stark contrast to the real world of Germany post World War Two. Walsh shines a light on the inescapable trauma of this period, suggests that there is a subliminal cultural memory, and shows that somehow inherent horror bubbles up from even the most seemingly innocuous forms of expression.” – J.F.
The Wind on the Heath, 2020
HD video with stereo audio
Duration 12:05 mins
This work was produced with financial support from Carlow County Council’s Individual Arts Act Grant.