Sven Johne/ Sebastian Orlac, Weiße Gewalt / White Storm (Source Material), 2020

06. Hubschrauber

„Helicopter rescues an 8 year old.
During a supply flight to the village of Sharprode, which is cut off from the outside world, the helicopter crew and Corvette Captain Köhler received the news that an 8-year-old boy from Trent must be flown over to the Stralsund District Hospital immediately, as the boy requires an immediate blood transport. At the landing site in Trent, which had been prepared in haste, the crew learned that the little patient had been brought in by tractors. As the crew had discovered two tractors stuck in deep snow during landing and flight, they decided to make a risky second landing in the open field directly next to the tractor. Thus the child was given timely help yesterday. Pravda, the central organ of the CPSU, also reported on this heroic action on January 15.“

This week, Sven Johne presents six videos as a sneak peek into his new work in progress: a work about the snow catastrophe on the island of Rügen which happened in the winter of 1978/1979.

“These films are not works of art, but only a filmed collection of the material for a photo-text work I’m currently developing with Sebastian Orlac. The work is about the snow catastrophe on the island of Rügen in 1978/79 — the place where I was living then — and the reflection of this state of emergency today. A contemporary witness tells a child about the crisis and he talks about the “heroism“ of his generation. The core of this work is about „masculinity“ and „defensiveness“ — or rather the tradition of these constructed and questionable self-attributions… The six small videos, however, only show the source materials for the work: a lot of photos from the press published in 1978/79 and the newspaper articles read by the children. It is interesting that we talk about a snow catastrophe in times of global warming. My son at the age of nine has seen the snow only once in Berlin.” — Sven Johne