19/4/09 Austrian Art videos / Films in the CCA

By Derschmidt • 12:39 AM • Category: Rites Events

Parallel to the „Oy Wina“ Film festival in the cinematheque, the Center of Contemporary Art, shows a compilation of nine Austrian art videos at the suggestion of the city of Vienna. The vdeos range from the avant-garde of the 1960ies/1970ies (Valie Export, Kurt Kren) to the contemporary digital and conceptional video art (Michael Aschauer, Klub Zwei, Virgil Widrich,…). Although this sample consists of a variety of artistic approaches, all the projects have one aspect in common: they question the mode of the medium „film,“ exploring its construction of perception and „cultural memory“ through the production of certain images.

Before the screening the media artist Michael Aschauer will give a lecture about his projects.

Curated by Friedemann Derschmidt and Karin Schneider (ritesinstitute)

Lecture by Michael Aschauer

in the CCA, April, 19th, 20:00

Before the screening of the compilation of Austrian Video Art at the CCA

Michael Aschauer is a young, internationally successful digital media artists from Austria. He translates the mechanisms of cinematographic representation – the connection between time, movement and space – into digital media.

He will talk about his artistic approach and some of his long time projects such as „24/7 into the direction of light“, „Nile studies“, „Vie:Sof 18:42“, „dun.AV“

http://m.ash.to

Screening

in the CCA, April, 19th, 20:00 after the lecture

Michael Aschauer

24/7 (INTO THE DIRECTION OF LIGHT)

A2008 BetaSP/1:16:9 LB/Colour silent

9 minutes

The picture’s blackness at the beginning turns into ever-lightening shades of blue, eventually becoming a view of the sea: water and sky, which change constantly in fast motion, then return to black (the colour of the night). Shot over a period of seven days, 24 hours each, 24/7 (Into the Direction of Light) uses digital technology to continue the tradition of experimental film dedicated to exploring the mechanisms of cinematographic representation, using landscapes and their topographic features or natural phenomena. (Claudia Slanar)

Axel Stockburger

VIEW TOKYO ARCADE WARRIORS: TAKAGO

A 2007/2008 BetaSP/4:3 Colour

3:25 minutes

This work is part of a series of videos that portrait players of video and computer games. It was shot in a public game arcade in Shinjuku/Tokyo.

VIEW PSK WARRIORS: GRAN TURISMO

BetaSP/4:3 Colour

3:48 minutes

This video portrays the player of a popular racing game and was filmed in a private flat in London

Klub Zwei – Jo Schmeiser und Simone Bader

BLACK AND WHITE – THE BACK OF THE IMAGES

A 2003 Beta SP, 4:3 B&W, A / GB 2003

5 minutes

»Black and White« deals with the meaning of historical photographs in the present. How were photo documents of the Holocaust shown in 1945? In which contexts are they placed today? Rosemarie Nief, the librarian and head of the photo archive at the Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library in London analyses the ways in which the media represent photo documents of the Holocaust. Her statements are juxtaposed with passages from a text by Clément Chéroux published in “Mémoire des Camps” in Paris.

Valie Export

…REMOTE…REMOTE

A 1973, 16mm Coulor

10 minutes

Human behaviour is influenced by past events, no matter how long ago they occurred. This has led to the existence of a spiritual para-time that runs parallel to objective time and is constantly subject to the influence of the prayers of fear and guilt, of the incapability to overcome, of deformations that tear open the skin, of visual manifestations. I point to something representing past and present.

Valie Export

With sometimes painful directness, Valie Export conducts a psychological investigation of the body in this film performance, externalizes an internal state. In front of a police photo showing two children who were sexually abused by their parents, she tortuously cuts into her cuticles until blood drips into a bowl of milk on her lap. On top of the symbolic plane of blood and milk, the physical effect on the viewer of her destructive act of self-mutilation is extreme.

Gustav Deutsch

FILM IST.

A 2002

01 MOVEMENT AND TIME

6:07 minutes

02 LIGHT AND DARKNESS

7:06 minutes

Film ist. consists almost entirely of excerpts from various scientific films. This footage shows the flight of pigeons, intelligence test performed on apes, upside-down worlds and stereoscopic vision, hurricanes and effect of shock waves. How glass breaks, how small children walk and a Mercedes crashing into a brick wall in slow motion. Written by Sixpack Film {office@sixpackfilm.com}

Kurt Kren

2/60 48 Heads From the Szondi Test

A 1960 B&W silent

4:19 minutes

Kren’s second film and the first he cut according to a strictly serial, sequence technique: in various framesizes, the 48 portraits from the Szondi Test for “experimental diagnosis of human impulses” are shown in pre-specified lengths (between one and eight frames). (Peter Tscherkassky)

Kren’s 48 heads refer to a psychological procedure known as the Szondi Test. Running four minutes and shot at various speeds, Kren’s film fragments faces in extreme close-up: eyes, chins, hairlines, foreheads, with an occasional block of images using full-face. The film ends with mouths, viewed so closely as to be nearly abstracted. In 48 Köpfe body parts lose their original identification and become the subject of formal concerns. (Regina Cornwell, The Other Side: European Avant-Garde Cinema 1960-1980)

Virgil Widrich

Copy Shop

A 2001 B&W

12 minutes

Peculiar irregularities such as dog ears on the edges of images and streaks arouse the suspicion that the content of Virgil Widrich’s Copy Shop is not quite able to master the form. Misleading conventions dominate at first: A man (Alfred Kager) wakes up, arranges his hair and goes out into the street on his normal way to work. After he arrives, he xeroxes his hand (and his identity) and the world goes to pieces.

The man continues to make copies of the film frames—first one Doppelgänger appears, and then an infinite number are produced. The first few scenes are sufficient for Widrich to show his hero’s growing confusion, and to gradually deepen the bewilderment felt by his audience. By skillfully altering certain shots—such as when an objective shot suddenly moves into a subjective point-of-view—and driving a fable into a state of paranoia, he blurs conventional narrative techniques and modes of identification.

Grainy black-and-white images and the soundtrack, which comprises solely music and sound effects, give Copy Shop a grotesque flavor, something of a pastiche of a Kafkaesque scenario in which the disappearance of all originality thanks to the various media is announced with a hint of irony. The film reflects this from the other direction by starting with the production process: Originally shot on videotape, the images were printed out on a computer and then shot again with an animation camera. (Dominik

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