"Taking the dog for a walk" © Hagen Rehborn 2008 (German titel : "Gassi im Park") Video DV Länge 31.46 Minuten - all rights reserved Actor: Hagen Rehborn Camera: Charlotte Schwalb, Hagen Rehborn Edit: Hagen Rehborn Music: Eastman, Tobias Drentwett, Hagen Rehborn Text: Hagen Rehborn Translation: Hagen Rehborn The german version of the video was first shown in summer 2007 at an exibition in the Kunstverein Emmerich, Germany, (closely to the dutch boarder). The video reflect aspects of the exibition place, a teehouse of the 18th century, situated in the town park with view to the river rhein. The park showed up to be the place in Emmerich for pedestrians to have a short walk with their dogs. The various range of social affiliations goes from homeless men with alkohol addiction who stay for hours to business people taking their pedigree dog for a walk during lunch break. The video was projekted on the outside wall and later shown on tv-sets that were visible from outside through the windows. Many dog owners were attracted to the exibition place and even went inside accompanied by their dogs to see the exibition. The video shows a text about a man who meets a woman in a forest. 
The man owns a dog, the woman owns a black poodle. The order of events represent a possible escalation of occurrences breaking the ordenary experience of taking a dog for a walk. The progression of events symbolizes different aspects of human apperception: the surface: the forest, the plants, the trees, the water, the ground, the dog, the woman, the black poodle, the birds, the weather, the clima, etc. and it's symbolic meanings behind as a representation of human habits, social convergency, desires, projection of whishes, fears and despairs. The video shows the text as an equably moving ticker. Behind the text is a floating image level showing a landscape over water and later under water. This floating scenery is interrupted by sequences in which a man in a wedding dress is delivering a clay object to the river rhein. This object is the head of a dog. The sound is departed in differnt levels that mix up by getting overlayed. One sound structures the text flow formally, another sound supports the content of the story described in the text and a third completes the interrupting "wedding" -scenes. ©Hagen Rehborn 2008 Visualized text: Taking the dog for a walk © Hagen Rehborn 2007/08 - all rights reserved The dog waited the entire afternoon. It waggles and pants. The man takes the leash from the clothhanger. The weave enhances. The man applies the dog collar. Both are walking towards the door. The house is situated at the edge of the woods. Suburb. The dog is waiting at the wrought-iron gate of the gateway. It is a bit rusty and squeaks when the man opens one wing. The dog hustles with the nose ahead through the first opening rift. The man is shouting at it angrily. The dog is turning back, the man attaches the leash with the snap hook at the dog collar. The dog waggles and now they are both walking along the road, approximately 200 meters till the end of the line of the houses. There the lane disembogues into a sidewalk, seperated by roadblocks.The dog snuffles and raises his leg at a hedge fringe, the man pulls him away quickly. The forest is in immediate nearness. It is humid, it was raining just some minutes ago. The trees are very green and dense, the forestground is braun, moist and on some spots it is covered with light fouling. It smells like soil and grass. The dog pulls the leash. While passing the roadblocks it has exceptionally taken, the side at which one could pass by holding the leash. Else it always takes the side where you have to pull it backwards, therewith the arm wont get caught by relinquishing the leash. The man pulls the dog to his side and detaches the the snap hook. The dog is very much exited and bears down to a neap shrub to urinate. At the woodside the path is only covered with grid and turns around a corner through a stock of poplars. The dog runs ahead. The man summons the dog. The dog turns back, runs towards the man, waggles and reverses again to follow the path with a fast footfall. The man follows the dog. Behind the poplars, which are brawling softly in the wind, there is a water located in a glade. The forestpond. The man can‘t see the dog anymore. But through the leaves of the trees he sees a person standing on the other side of the pond, it shines whitely. The man accelerates his steps a bit more and crosses the poplars. Now he can oversee the whole pond. The dog stands on the other side, close to a woman which is wearing a white trenchcoat. In front of her stands the dog and a black poodle. The woman removes a stick of the ground and throws it into the water. The dog pounces behind and swimms towards the point, where the water induced little waves accused by the strike hitting the water surface. It wheezes loudly. The black poodle stands on the lightly elevated shore and barks,