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(English text)
„sex, love and the city“
The program, curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr, presents experimental videos/films that use narrative forms.
In fine art, the discussion about the narrative element has been enflamed again in the last decade. Within the field of experimental and art films and video, however, as with the proximity to its bigger brother feature film, it is hard to say if an individual piece of work is undertaking to discover narrative form anew, or if it is on the verge to overcome, and thus to leave it behind. Last not least, dealing with narration eventually means to deal with emotions and with relations with the lived-in (urban) environment.
Mark L. Feinsod’s position seems to be closest to classical feature film. The traditional plot, however, falls to pieces, splits into single visual, fictional or observant explorations, like the scene with the fan dance performance by the popular burlesque The Bombshell! Girls in his video After An Autumn Day That Felt Like Summer. The plot has been reduced to a mere framework, not without offering the opening for our interpretation: Loose ends instead of Happy End, also for human relations.
Gretchen Hasse as well composes images in the framework of a story. Images, which develop their own dynamics and virtuosity within the scenes and takes, just like her characters are intermingled with their images and encounters. Frozen is telling the story of “Red” meeting her alter ego “Bird” who with her unwholesome, loving influence eventually brings “Red” back to her true self.
Talking about Tobias Schmücking’s films we can hardly speak about a plot. The images in his films, however, not only are settings but also edited in ways of narrative montage. In 30 Meilen nördlich von Edmonton 16. Juni 1969 (June 16, 1969, 30 Miles North of Edmonton) and Auermühle, Mai 2003 (Auermühle, May 2003) already the in their title contained date and time suggest a visual story at a specific place, a story that makes the place itself a space of fiction.
Elina Saloranta’s video embarks from a narration: The title Le Lit des Amants (The Lover’s Bed) signifies the bed of the lovers in “L’Amants de la Chine du Nord” written by Marguerite Duras. The artist edited the original text like a collage resulting in a new “Ciné-Roman” (cine novel). In contemporary lingo, we would call it sampling if during the black and white montage of image and sound, the different conceptions of the poetical self were not dissolving in a single and singular voice: M. Duras, the writer, M. Duras, the young girl, the protagonists in the visuals and the filmmaker herself become one. Thus, let us call it poetry. |
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