During her stay in America, it was the Californian desert that made the biggest impression on Baranowsky. This landscape with its charged visual language found a way into several of her works. In Blown in the Wind the leading role is played by a tumbleweed that she found on one of her long walks. These plants are familiar to us from western films, where they are used as a metaphor – meanwhile a cliché – for the inhospitable and isolated landscape. The work’s comedy is based on a surreal combination of freeze-frame and movement: while the tumbleweed, driven by a strong wind, rolls into the distance, the landscape lies deathly still – not a cloud in the sky and not even a leaf is moving.  –Daniel Schreiber

1-channel video installation, ca. 90 cm x 120 cm, 1:16 min., color, silent

Blown in the Wind, 2002: installation view at Galerie Barbara Weiss, 2003, as part of “Heike Baranowsky: American Skies”. Photo: Jens Ziehe