WOHNZIMMERGRÜN_ LIVING ROOM GREEN_english
Eva-Maria Lopez

 

WOHNZIMMERGRUEN  LIVING ROOM GREEN

During football league championships, I see green, WOHNZIMMERGRÜN.

When you look at dramatic plays with a little distance outside and photograph them, they produce nearly a meditative effect.

During important plays there is a special atmosphere in the streets. Towns turn usually into ghost towns. You hardly see cars or pedestrians – just in the break, they walk the dog, go out fetching cigarettes, smoke on the balcony.
I have always liked such evenings, enjoying the somehow deserted atmosphere – on the road on the motorway, in a strange complicity with other companions.
Previously to the European football championship 2012, during a friendly match, I walked through the streets in the evening. In the windows I saw the colour green. The LED screens indicate if the people in their houses watch football games because the lawn of the playng field illuminates their living rooms with its colour. It looks very differently during the regular TV programm: there is a blue shimmer or a red sparkle.
In the post-war period, the colour grey predominated for a long time. During the football World Cup 1974 in Germany, the whole tournament was broadcasted in the colour television set.
During the European Championship 2012 and the football World Cup 2014, I have been wandering about the streets with camera and tripod, mostly at the second interval, so that it was dark enough, and prospected for green windows. You have to search a bit, because bright light in the room or at the front absorbs the green light. During the break or the fading of the grandstands, just the usual bluish television light appears.In my artistic works I explore the urban space. I am interested in visualising the traces of everyday events on the basis of architecture, buildings and living spaces.
I called the series WOHNZIMMERGRÜN, because I am amused by the ambiguity of the title, corresponding with the house plants that are placed in the living room windows. The photographs were mostly taken in Karlsruhe, and besides in Landau, Freiburg and Berlin.
The photographs I took in different quarters -- an average of different houses and social classes and cross sections connected by the green colour while watching television.
My intention was to light up the topic of football in a different way. No game scenes, no enthusiastic fans, no public viewing – only the distant view of a dramatic event. I was fascinated by the contrast between the colour of hope on the quiet fronts and possible abyss behind the WOHNZIMMERGRÜN.

Quite apart from the cracks in the facade of the international football world...

 

Photos