Video Mundi Program 6
THE GIFT OF SOUND AND VISION: AUSTRIAN AUDIOVISIONS
Curated by Brigitta Burger-Utzer, Austria, Sponsored by the Consulate of Austria

Thursday, April 22 8:00pm at the Chicago Cultural Center
Sunday, April 24 7:00pm at Heaven Gallery

Gustav Deutsch sound: Martin Siewert
Sixpack Film Trailer, 2003, 49 sec.
Light produces the image. The light's colors produce those of the image. The transitions between the colors produce the movement within the image. The colors' durations and the transitions between them produce the speed of the movement. The reduction in duration produces the colors' symbiosis. The colors' symbiosis produces white light. The soundtrack produces the image's atmosphere. (G.D. & M.S.).

G.S.I.L VI / almada sound: @c
lia, 2001, 4 min.
G.S.I.L.VI/almada offers an example of reductionism: frameworks and forms which overlap and are in constant motion, which renew themselves independently and are shot through by vertical and horizontal movements. The basic geometric shapes (polygon, arc and line) correspond with each other and with the sounds. (Vraath Ohner) .

karoe goldt sound: rashim
ILOX, 2001, 3 min.
In a barely noticeable way, vertical strips with shades of red move intermittently to the rhythmically snapping and crackling soundtrack by rashim. The at times vague shadow of a twig appears through the strips of color. The work uses this radical reduction to create an enormous amount of tension. (Norbert Pfaffenbichler)

[n:ja] sound: shabotinski
track 09, 2001, 4 min.
Track 09 is a lively game with spatial structures. the constant modulation of scales and the resulting shifts in the grid's spaces provide glimpses into "microscopic" spaces.

Thomas Aigelsreiter sound: Rudi Aigelsreiter
Key West, 2002, 4 min.
Images of boat-like cars sailing down the highway, of bikini-clad girls on the beach, of surfers riding the waves. Why is it that these images of Key West still arouse such a great deal of fascination when the majority have succumbed to sound reasoning long ago? Why does such an image of longing, reduced in potency but still effective, appear among strategies of alienation? Precisely what do images of driving, the beach and surfing under Florida's sun have to do with a promise of freedom? (Vraath Ohner)

Michaela Grill sound: Martin Siewert
trans, 2002, 9 min.
It is a work of shadows and silhouettes, a rediscovery of electronic cinema as abstract painting. The fleeting nature of the images is its underlying design: gray outlines against a white background; lines, grids and fields flit past, phantoms of reality caught in an intermediate zone of computer hard drives. The main intention of Siewert's ingenious soundtrack is not so much to accompany the visuals, but to enrich them, to expand upon and complement them, to provide a contrast: There are ominous creeks, crackles and rumbles, and at the conclusion the hint of a melody, a synthetic bass line, can be heard. (Stefan Grissemann)

Michaela Schwentner music: Radian
transistor, 2000, 6 min.
Accompanied by short, choppy segments of noise fragments, geometric gridworks appear with equal abruptness, as in a visual staccato. This not only places a visual matrix underneath the rasping, eruptive sound as a foundation, it also reveals the underlying matrix-like quality, the locking function in the digital culture as the interface at which graphic and acoustic elements have always overlapped. (Christian Holler)

Billy Roisz sound: dieb13
-2:20, 2003, col, 4 min.
The material's esthetics collide with the soundtrack, which evokes the sluggish nature of the mechanical. One material screeches into another, this becomes a kind of tentative probing which is superimposed with layers of electronic noises. The spectrum of acoustic atmospheres ranges from long before the record album was invented to its current renaissance. (Werner Korn)

[n:ja] music: Radian
< frame >, 2002, 5 min.
[n:ja] makes use of the viewing options available during a car ride: the arrow-like movement forward into image's depth and, at a right angle out of the side window, the perception of motion as a horizontal gliding. The right-angled system of lines formed by streets and building facades corresponds to modern functionalism's urban vocabulary of forms: the grid which provides the basis for the layout of cities and buildings since the modern age was born in New York and Chicago and went on to its triumphant advance around the world. (Stella Rollig)

Jurgen Moritz music: Christian Fennesz
Instrument, 1997, 5 min.
Instrument is reminiscent of found footage shot a long time ago: six seconds of a girl moving. Moritz calls this: six seconds of innocence. He manipulated the material until only fragments of this innocence remained. To the pumping rhythm of the music the girl is simultaneously present and absent, but never really present. Moritz makes her intangible und thus creates space for one's own phantasy. (Lies Holtrop)

Dariusz Krzeczek sound: Dariusz Krzeczek
Unterwerk, 2000, 2 min.
Superimposed horizontal and vertical patterns in rich, dark colours flow across the screen at pleasantly slow tempos. In contrast to the video's meditative effect, these abstractly floating visual sensations were created with footage showing speed. (Norbert Pfaffenbichler)

Timo Novotny sound: Sofa Surfers rmx Dorfmeister
Sofa Rockers, 2000, 4 min.
Each beat has its own speed, each tempo suggests certain images. Analogously to the laid-back drum 'n' bass, the images then begin a relaxed and aimless journey through Japan's urban spaces. When the music has faded away finally also the space comes to rest. (Dominik Kamalzadeh)

norbert pfaffenbichler sound: stefan nemeth
lotte schreiber 36, 2001, 2min.
36 refers to both aesthetic traditions of abstract painting and the structural approaches of early geometric films (such as those of walther ruttmann and hans richter). at the same time, other associations arise, such as early video games and their restricted movement, which was limited to the main axes. The tension and concentration of 36 caused in part by the clarity of the concept and the reduction of the means. (Gerald Weber)

michaela schwentner sound: Pure
the_future_of_human_containment, 2002, 4 min.
According to Vilém Flusser such images dissect text into computable dots which can be reassembled as desired. Therefore, decoding or interpreting the world is no longer necessary; one could say it is redesigned from the inside out. the_future_of_human_containment could be seen as an antithesis to the growing amount of control obtained through omnipresent recording of information, as an aesthetic and acoustic encryption machine which generates its own indecipherable codes. (Andrea Pollach)

skot music: Christian Fennesz
Aus, 1998, 4 min.
Skot create a caleidoscope of the world of moving images out of different clips. Through irritations and super-impositions they present the manipulability and fragility of the filmmaterial. (Brigitta Burger-Utzer).

ABOUT THE CURATOR:

Brigitta Burger-Utzer Born in 1960 in Vienna; studied theater and photography; degree in Cultural Management from the Kepler University, Linz. Founded sixpackfilm in 1990 (together with Martin Arnold, Alexander Horwath, Lisl Ponger, and Peter Tscherkassky); since 1992 managing director of sixpackfilm (association for lending and distribution of Austrian art films and videos); concept and/or organisation of numerous film series in Vienna; since 1994 in charge of the series "IN PERSON: International film/videoartists bring their work up for discussion"; 2003 edition of the book "frank films: the film and video work of Robert Frank" (together with Stefan Grissemann).