Title: Wings of Desire
Artist: Diana Păun
Country: Romania
Diana Păun works with photography and site specific installations with various objects in order to create an environment around photography in the space. Diana gets inspired by daily experiences as a member of society, the relationship between people, and the relationship between people and nature. She is interested in topics such as society, self-anthropology, collective memories, and emerging alternative histories.
She graduated from the bachelor’s and master’s program in the Department of “Photography and Dynamic Image” at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. During her years of study, she enjoyed two Erasmus studies, in France and Austria. She showcased her works at prestigious festivals such as the Milan Fashion Film Festival and the First Time Filmmaker Sessions organized by Lift-Off Global Network in the United Kingdom. Also in national or international exhibitions, ‘We Are Not Passive Visitors’ – Borderline Art Space, Iași, Romania, ‘Possible Interactions’ – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania the most recent being ‘In Translation – Nature’s Contexts’ held at Park View Gallery in Shenzhen, China.
Artist’s Vision:
For the CineEuroConnect project, I decided to focus on the film Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders. In my opinion, this film holds great significance in the history of cinema, not just in terms of its narrative, but also from a visual, social, and historical perspective.
I am especially attracted to the sequence in the older man trying to find Potsdamer Platz. Even though the map and all his research point him to the correct place, Potsdamer Platz differs from what he remembered before the Second World War.
For the project, I want to approach the Postader Platz location in Berlin in a Polaroid photographic image with the sky as the main subject. Over time, places change for various reasons, but the sky remains the same as the original title says “Der Himmel über Berlin”. Through this project, I want to pay tribute to the movie and the memories that remain with and define us despite the changes around us. I want to work with Polaroid photography because this type of photography is associated with memories.
This work is arresting for its ingenious use of medium to explore the theme. The Polaroid camera is of itself almost an artefact, having been almost replaced by digital film since its heyday in the 1970s-early 2000s. Part of the appeal of the Polaroid was that it offered instant memories, reflecting a moment caught so recently in time, already in the past but still so close. For those of us who grew up waiting for photographs to be developed, this was exciting.
Nowadays, Polaroid only survives because there is enough of a demand in the film and television industry to support it. Filmmakers still need Polaroids for hair and make-up, continuity and locations. So it has become something that resonates with film cast and crews alike, as a tool of our hidden craft.
This particular project uses this medium to remind us that film is both a recording device and a medium to reflect a particular point of view. Reflecting on Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders’ extraordinary 1987 work,Păun’s artwork is another love poem to Berlin, a city recurringly associated with freedom and oppression. In this work the artist invites us to contemplate how art and nature transcend temporal concerns and temporary political and personal situations. – Mary Kate O’Flanagan, curator