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Isa Melsheimer's film was produced on the occasion of the 2017 Urban Lights Ruhr Festival in Marl, near Münster. The film was shot on location, in a large fountain that is part of a public square within a building complex from the 1960s that includes the city's town hall. Switched-off in recent years because of damage and financial restraints, Melsheimer had the basin filled with water and staged a water ballet with synchronized swimmers. In addition to the choreography which Melsheimer created in collaboration with the well-known choreographer Frank Willens, the artist produced costumes and masks for each performer.

 

Melsheimer's video Wasserballett für Marl is both an homage and an ironic challenge to the city to come to terms with their architectural heritage. The artifice of the movements of the synchronized swimmers, a sport popular especially in the 1950s and 1960s, is posed in playful contrast with the architecture of the same period. In the backdrop of the Marl cityscape, the video merges layers of associations: the optimism of the 1950s and 1960s translated into notions of post-World War II urban renewal and the legacy of that project in its somewhat run-down present condition.