»Flip Your Wig (Perückt)« 
Light Box
Light Box
© 2003, Elke Reinhuber, VG-Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Camera: Carsten Eggers, Malika Keller, Steffi Bokeloh
Keywords
Information
Elke Reinhuber >
»Flip Your Wig (Perückt)«, 2003 - 2003
Co-Workers & Funding:
The Urban Beautician (Die Stadtkosmetikerin)http://www.urbanbeautician.com
Technology
Material
Video, each 4 min.Method
Performance to VideoInterventions in Public Space
Descriptions & Essays
Elke Reinhuber 13-03-2022
Heroes are hard to find. The few, who are considered to be worth remembering, are placed somewhere, soon to be forgotten. In the obscurity of arterial roads and shaggy groves characters of bronze or stone wait to be recognised. Maybe they freeze in the wintertime and in the summer the sun burns them. These two metallic men in particular stand in the shadows and only tourists or certain people, still living in the past, pay them more than a fleeting glance. Through the temporary intervention ›Flip Your Wig‹ the Urban Beautician bestows Mr Marx and Mr Engels new fluffy hair, felted from virgin wool on their cold skulls.
Performance at Marx-Engels-Forum, NAKT Berlin, 20th of September 2003
The Urban Beautician tries to improve neglected details in our urban environment with interventions in public space and performances to camera. Since almost two decades, she takes care of things no one else does. The world is as it is. Alone, I cannot change that. However, in all my performances I feel the environment is somehow improved, albeit for a short time. In these interventions I am usually clad in a beautician’s smock – as worn by professionals in the 1960s – referring to a branch of my life story I decided not to pursue.
I grew up behind the desk of a beauty salon and it was always assumed that I would become a beautician myself. Indeed, one day, I found myself in Bonn, at a well-known cosmetics company, undergoing training as a beautician.
During my studies, I spent some time behind the counter of a famous department store in Berlin, in its glittering parallel world, perfectly made-up, always following the latest trends.
Today I am aware of the necessity of small cosmetic alterations in order to emphasise advantages and conceal disadvantages – the secrets of make-up artists. In extensive research I identify incongruous or overlooked details of everyday life and try to emphasise or even improve them by performance interventions.
A photographic collection of these details usually forms the basis of most of my works. Often, individual objects from these collections are singled out and then transformed into a new, unusual context.
In this way I develop site-specific installations with objects, videos or photographic images of common objects, which might be presented in unexpected locations; in addition there emerge occasional frottages, screen prints or posters. Sometimes these objects are recontextualised by a performance or are documented in a video to be projected in an appropriate location. These ephemera gain a new breath of life through performance, installations, video and photography.
Elke Reinhuber: Flip Your Wig (Perückt), 13-03-2022, in: Archive of Digital Art Heroes are hard to find. The few, who are considered to be worth remembering, are placed somewhere, soon to be forgotten. In the obscurity of arterial roads and shaggy groves characters of bronze or stone wait to be recognised. Maybe they freeze in the wintertime and in the summer the sun burns them. These two metallic men in particular stand in the shadows and only tourists or certain people, still living in the past, pay them more than a fleeting glance. Through the temporary intervention ›Flip Your Wig‹ the Urban Beautician bestows Mr Marx and Mr Engels new fluffy hair, felted from virgin wool on their cold skulls.
Performance at Marx-Engels-Forum, NAKT Berlin, 20th of September 2003
The Urban Beautician tries to improve neglected details in our urban environment with interventions in public space and performances to camera. Since almost two decades, she takes care of things no one else does. The world is as it is. Alone, I cannot change that. However, in all my performances I feel the environment is somehow improved, albeit for a short time. In these interventions I am usually clad in a beautician’s smock – as worn by professionals in the 1960s – referring to a branch of my life story I decided not to pursue.
I grew up behind the desk of a beauty salon and it was always assumed that I would become a beautician myself. Indeed, one day, I found myself in Bonn, at a well-known cosmetics company, undergoing training as a beautician.
During my studies, I spent some time behind the counter of a famous department store in Berlin, in its glittering parallel world, perfectly made-up, always following the latest trends.
Today I am aware of the necessity of small cosmetic alterations in order to emphasise advantages and conceal disadvantages – the secrets of make-up artists. In extensive research I identify incongruous or overlooked details of everyday life and try to emphasise or even improve them by performance interventions.
A photographic collection of these details usually forms the basis of most of my works. Often, individual objects from these collections are singled out and then transformed into a new, unusual context.
In this way I develop site-specific installations with objects, videos or photographic images of common objects, which might be presented in unexpected locations; in addition there emerge occasional frottages, screen prints or posters. Sometimes these objects are recontextualised by a performance or are documented in a video to be projected in an appropriate location. These ephemera gain a new breath of life through performance, installations, video and photography.
Literature
Reinhuber, Elke. »The Urban Beautician: a practice of transferring ephemeral interventions in the public space via media into a work of art.« LUMINA , no. 2 (May / August 2017): 60-81.
Reinhuber, Elke. The Urban Beautician (Die Stadtkosmetikerin). Braunschweig, Germany: HBK (Hochschule für Bildende Künste), 2010.
Reinhuber, Elke and Sebastian Pelz. Suitable for Framework. Edinburgh, UK: The Forest, 2005.
Exhibitions & Events