DIE LORELEY

In this computer-animation, Van Kerckhoven links together portrait paintings she made between 1987 and 1990 of 54 people that visited her unexpectedly. These people are acquaintances, friends and relatives. She linked each person chronologically to some words of the poem ‘Die Loreley’ of Heinrich Heine (1797- 1856). Melancholy, fate and inevitability of seduction and doom shimmer trough the poem. Sailors, attracted by the enchanting singing of the wind by the Loreley, a riff in the Rhine, wreck their ships in trance against the riff. The Loreley-movie is a morphing of 54 faces, divided in 6 strophes. The soundtrack evokes a barge bobbing up and down, in the water.