claudia esslinger
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    • Distant Tracings
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    • Double Vision
    • States of Being
    • Video Sculptures
    • Motion Pictures
    • Horizon
    • La Medida >
      • La Medida: Act 5: Proportion
      • La Medida Act 4: Meter
      • La Medida: Act 3: Frequency and Amplitude
      • La Medida: Act 2 Interpolation
      • La Medida: Act 1 Modulation
    • The Synergy Project
    • Texture Mapping II
    • Civil Divination
    • Projected Memories
    • Breathing Room
    • Barriers
    • Retopia
    • Plucking the Songbird
    • Suburban Comfort
    • Spoems
    • Searching for the Aurora
    • Stereopsis
  • Film
    • The (Snow) Migrant
    • Altered Seas, Altered States
    • Sparrow
    • Distant Tracings
    • Vestiges/ Solus
    • MovingGMA
    • Breathing Lessons
    • Cistern
    • Frequency and Amplitude
    • Avis Urbanus
    • InnerArbor
    • Render
    • Absent/ Present
    • La Medida y Cabo de Hornos
    • Trapeze
    • Texture Mapping
  • Photo
    • Specimens and Reflections
    • The (Snow) Migrant
    • Morphology
    • Sparrow
    • Dreams
    • Empty
  • CV and Bio
  • Design
  • Collaboration Links
  • Student Work
  • Sketchbook
Retopia was created in response experiences during an artist’s residency in Dresden, Germany in 1999 and was revised in 2001.  The core of the installation is a rawhide stretcher, reminiscent of a fireman’s safety net, with images of cobblestones from Dresden projected on it in moving, deep space. The viewer mounts a viewing platform above the fray, at once removed and yet a voyeur. The audio montage is of the broken sounds of radio as if from the night of the firebombing of Dresden in 1945. Through this mélange,  the viewer is invited to consider their role in tragedy.
     The first version of this project was exhibited  in 2000 at the DAAP gallery at the University of Cincinnati.  It included several more “scenes” such as an architect’s drafting table with a projection of a woman who is being filmed along the edges of her body. Another scene of scaffolding and transparent scrims that received the camera tracing of architecture in Dresden along with two small monitors with a video image of an eyebrow being plucked and a beard being shaved.
     The section with the rawhide stretcher was exhibited in “Connections: Ohio Artists Abroad” at the Riffe Center, Columbus, SPACES, Cleveland and the Weston Gallery, Cincinnati, 2002-2003.

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  • Current
  • Installation/Media
    • Distant Tracings
    • Host
    • Double Vision
    • States of Being
    • Video Sculptures
    • Motion Pictures
    • Horizon
    • La Medida >
      • La Medida: Act 5: Proportion
      • La Medida Act 4: Meter
      • La Medida: Act 3: Frequency and Amplitude
      • La Medida: Act 2 Interpolation
      • La Medida: Act 1 Modulation
    • The Synergy Project
    • Texture Mapping II
    • Civil Divination
    • Projected Memories
    • Breathing Room
    • Barriers
    • Retopia
    • Plucking the Songbird
    • Suburban Comfort
    • Spoems
    • Searching for the Aurora
    • Stereopsis
  • Film
    • The (Snow) Migrant
    • Altered Seas, Altered States
    • Sparrow
    • Distant Tracings
    • Vestiges/ Solus
    • MovingGMA
    • Breathing Lessons
    • Cistern
    • Frequency and Amplitude
    • Avis Urbanus
    • InnerArbor
    • Render
    • Absent/ Present
    • La Medida y Cabo de Hornos
    • Trapeze
    • Texture Mapping
  • Photo
    • Specimens and Reflections
    • The (Snow) Migrant
    • Morphology
    • Sparrow
    • Dreams
    • Empty
  • CV and Bio
  • Design
  • Collaboration Links
  • Student Work
  • Sketchbook