Synopsis
In 1973/74 a “very strange mask story” with the title was created in Aachen“caput mortuum”. In the story of the black and white horse's head, a light-footed masked society experiences scenes of happy exuberance throughout a summer day in film-like slide projections.
The big mask festival at the edge of the forest ultimately becomes a place of mysterious transformation. A phantom-like figure with a black horse's head appears and interrupts the game.
In the middle of the dance, the masks get frightened and flee into the forest; A girl continues dancing, ecstatically dancing to her death.
Images of fear transform the masks into pale faces.
When they return to the summer meadow, they find the dead girl wearing the mask of a white horse's head. Death has left its mask behind: – caput mortuum –
The masks gather in the city for the nightly funeral ceremony and remember the events and experiences they have experienced. Finally, they burn the horse's head out in the foggy fields before the next morning a girl with the "empty picture frame of history" disappears between the gnarled head beech trees.
The premiere of this two-part slide story took place exactly one year after the interrupted Spring Festival on September 9th/10th. March 1974 in the ballroom of the NEUEN GALERIE in Aachen. Shortly afterwards, on July 12, 1974, a “second premiere” for the revised and shortened version of “caput mortuum” took place in the theater hall of the TH-Mensa in front of a large audience. Both events were recognized by the impressed Aachen press.
Later, the “Story of the Black and White Horse Head” was shown at many events and exhibitions. Unfortunately, the original slide boxes have been missing since September 2018!? For the exhibition “Peter Mainka – A Life for Art” in June 2019, I prepared my video recording of a “caput mortuum presentation” that Peter Mainka presented on March 29, 1996 in the Barockfabrik-Aachen The video documentation shown at the exhibition has since been revised several times and can now be experienced again - 50 years after the premiere - with accompanying material and additional background information here on the Kulturserver-NRW.
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