Heimerdinger: Yes, and that reaches an extreme in the video with Martin Glade («The space between us fills my hear with intolerable grief and impossible joy»), where I asked him to laugh for a half hour, then cry for a half hour, and then saw how the emotions became almost interchangeable. At one point, the acted emotion could no longer be distinguished from the genuine emotion; the emotions became confused.

Peters: Compared to the photographic work that you set before the videos (Picture Sample), which recorded Glade’s grimaces and gestures, the different filmic and photographic works are very successful at showing modes of expression. The photographic always needs exaggerating in order to be read at all, while the filmic develops over a period of time, thus giving it the chance to incorporate and sustain more inapplicable moments or failures.

Heimerdinger: That perhaps compares to the difference between theater and film acting. Question from the audience: The visual language of the photographer Nina Lüth, with whom you worked on the series «Martin as,» is rather well-known and extremely unique. How did it happen that you chose to work with her on this series with Martin Glade?

Heimerdinger: When I shoot a film, I never shoot it myself; I have a cameraman for that. Of course, I’m present all throughout the shooting. I could even imagine photographing this project with a different photographer, but with the same actor. The results would certainly be completely different. It’s a performance similar to the one that involved improvising with the actors and never knowing what I was going to get. From the start, Martin carefully considered and prepared each shot. For example, he cooked and then ate, and it was important to him what he cooked; not only that there would be cooking involved, but what he actually cooked. This enacted passing of a day was almost like a ritualistic act.

Daniels: In connection with digital image production, one hears a lot about the death of photography, followed by discussing the lost role of the photographic image as an authentic depiction of reality, and while the digital image is thought to be totally manipulative and arbitrary by comparison. You use digital picture processing in only two of the early works that you presented here. Nevertheless, you do address the question of authenticity, only with different means. This phrasing of the question, often