Stefan Roloff

Life

In 1984, Stefan Roloff was invited to experiment on prototypes of digital video and imaging computers at the New York Institute of Technology, where he pioneered the blending of painting with digital media. On their Images 2 system he created Big Fire, the first digital video done by an artist. Also at NYIT, he developed Moving Painting, a process in which a painting is set in motion by filming each stage that it passes through during its creation. He received international recognition for this concept and collaborated with musicians Suicide, Martin Rev, Andrew Cyrille and Peter Gabriel, with whom he produced FACE, the prototype for his video Sledgehammer, as well as the video ZAAR, for Gabriel's album Passion. In 1989, Roloff received a Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts for his digital work.

He has since produced and directed numerous videos and two documentary films. Each film is accompanied by an art installation, providing a three-dimensional space which the viewers can enter for a direct experience of the subject matter. From 1989 to 1999, he worked on his first documentary film “Seeds”. Traveling through remote areas of West Virginia, he followed the story of a 22- year old woman who committed suicide in 1981 in an isolation cell at the State Prison for Women. The film was combined with an installation, “Pence Springs Resort”, a life-size three-dimensional photographic rendering of the isolation cell which the viewers could physically enter. It was shown at Threadwaxing Space in New York in 1995.

In 1997 he began to work on his second documentary film The Red Orchestra, a portrait of his late father, Helmut Roloff, a resistance fighter against the Nazis. It was nominated for best foreign film 2005 by the US Women Critics Circle. For the first time it told the true story of the “Red Orchestra”, a resistance group that was slandered during the cold war by secret services and historians as a Communist spy network. For this film, Stefan Roloff received a 2002 New York City Media Arts grant from the Jerome Foundation. He also wrote a book in German, “Die Rote Kapelle”, published by Ullstein in 2002. In 2015, through an initiative by Stefan Roloff, Gustin Reichbach and Ellen Meyers, The Red Orchestra was incorporated into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's permanent exhibition. In addition, Roloff's source interviews with members of the Red Orchestra are accessible on the HMM's database.

Recently, Stefan Roloff has produced 60 interviews with former citizens of the GDR which provide an detailed look at life behind the Iron Curtain. He also collaborates with Rock musician Martin Rev on an audiovisual live concept, based on Roloff's visuals and Rev's music. Roloff's video installation "Life in the Death Zone" is permanently installed at Villa Schoningen.

Selected exhibitions

Video Compilations

Filmography

Books, Catalogues