3 February 2002

Videoart feature
Never Wake Up

3 February 2002

The time after Wilfried’s launch as “Agricola de Cologne” and at the same time starting on 1 January 2000 – his project “ A Virtual Memorial Foundation” was a kind of dreamtime, because by being artistically creative Wilfried started to re-establish a new memory, however he had always been aware that somewhere the memory of the 1st 50 years of his physical life was hidden, probably not only inside, but for sure in external sources like the memory of his mother and his partner Micha which could be indicating that and how Wilfried had existed before.

Internally, Wilfried was continuously fighting – recognizing himself as a warrior in a war called “life”. In autumn 2001, Wilfried released his net based movie –Never Wake Up – created in Flash Superficially seen it was representing a kind of anti-war movie, but as a matter of fact it was standing in the context of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington , after Wilfried had finished a post-trauma therapy only a few days earlier and by viewing and realizing on television the incredible attack on the evening of 11 September – identifying himself with it, Wilfried shockingly fell deeply re-traumatized immediately in agony with the highest fever which did not want to stop.

Again sliding along the abyss between death and life, during these real dark times, when Wilfried was enforced to lie in dark room for a long time, the creative principle was winning again, one day surprisingly Wilfried started reciting in this darkness a poetic text, composing a simple continuously looping musical piece on the computer and with the assistance of Micha they recorded the basic component for the later movie Never Wake Up.

Nobody can imagine, how much it meant to Wilfried, when – hardly released on the net, “Never Wake Up” was chosen for participating already at the end of 2001 in the US show “Casting a Net” @ McLean Project for the Arts , in which, by the way, also Patrick Lichty and STANZA were participating, motivating him to continue and in February 2002 this movie became the featured work on NOEMA Magazine in February 2002 and other online magazines, festivals and exhibitions.

There is another version of “Never Wake Up” in mp4 HD using the footage related to most recent warfares

Never Wake Up
movie created by media artist Agricola de Cologne.
It is based on the artist’s poem of the same name.

Subject:
Loss of identity: Soldiers become distorted, veterans of war are not able
to be reintegrated in society.