If you enter the hall displaying seventeenth century Dutch paintings on the second floor of the Bremen Kunsthalle, your eye will be drawn, involuntarily, to a contemporary video screen that, at first glance, seems out of place among the Old Masters. Yet, on closer look, it is wonderfully integrated with them.  As a modern marine piece, it adds its own special accent. Rider on the Storm (Apokalyptischer Reiter 2) by the Bremen artist, Marikke Heinz-Hoek. Under dark, fast moving clouds a windsurfer glides on storm-rolled water, is tossed up, disappearing from the scene, only to reappear in the next moment. The camera follows the surfer from shore, almost as if glued to his feet. The roar of the surf and the rush of the wind accompany the moving images.  Color and sound are strangely distorted, making the scene seem surreal, almost magical.  After a brief cross-fade, the video starts over. An infinite loop, without beginning or end.

How and where did the video originate? The artist grew up in East Fresia, where the Meerbusen Dollart is located, half of it in Germany, half in the Netherlands. It was formed during several storm surges in the Middle Ages that submerged several dozen villages, drowning a great many people. Marikke Heinz-Hoek has dedicated a total of three videos to these communities and victims of natural catastrophe. Many of her drawings, paintings, videos, photographs, installations and texts are devoted to exploring themes of remembering and legend building.  Rider on the Storm (Apokalyptischer Reiter) was filmed with a handheld camera in the summer of 2002. Around noon on an extremely stormy day, the artist filmed the scene from the vantage point of an abandoned drilling island. She inverted the colors, turning positive into negative, making the sky appear sometimes sulphur-yellow and the water along the shoreline almost black, increasing the threatening, apocalyptic atmosphere. In the studio, the video and the simultaneously recorded sound were further manipulated and transformed into very slow motion. The inverted coloration and the slow motion result in the above-mentioned unnatural and abstract effects of the video.  The artist created two versions: Version 1 in landscape aspect, with an edition of 10 copies (of which one is in the East Fresia Landesmuseum Emden); Version 2 in portrait aspect, in an edition of 3 copies (of which one is in the Kunsthalle Bremen). The title Rider on the Storm is a play on the song by The Doors (1971) with its deep, melancholy lyrics.

Marikke Heinz-Hoek´s Rider on the Storm (Apokalyptischer Reiter) is at the mercy of the mighty power of nature, like Caspar David Friedrich´s Monk by the Sea (1908-10).  It is a metaphor for human existence, always at risk. How does that first verse of the song by the Doors go? "Riders on the storm/Riders on the storm/ Into this house we ´re born/Into this world we´re thrown/Like a dog without a bone/An actor out on loan/Riders on the storm."