Picture: Revenant, Michelle Alperin

“Revenant”

Michelle Alperin, 3:51 min, 2013

Revenant is a surrealistic fantasy with strong references to absurd theatre and, in this sense, continues the exploration of a cinematic dream logic. Laura and Max, a married couple, spend a relaxed weekend afternoon at home. When Laura hears noises at the front door, she meets Max and a visitor there – a large, mysterious dog dressed in a black cardigan. Laura seems stunned, partly by the dog itself, partly by Max’s claim that the dog has come to see her. Laura is all the more surprised because Max insists that the dog definitely speaks English. We, the audience, are equally uncertain whether this is true, because we hear the dog both barking and speaking.

Revenant asks a series of questions: Is Max manipulating Laura by bringing this strange dog into her house to challenge her with mind games and unsolvable riddles? If so, why? Or can Laura understand the dog, just like Max and the audience, even though she denies it? If so, why does she deny her acquaintance with the dog? And who is the mysterious and wondrous figure who disturbs the household community on a sleepy afternoon? It’s about an almost equal emotional conflict of three characters and we can’t really understand any of the motives. Revenant works with the means of exaggeration, fantasy and the absurd to reveal the dynamics within the couple’s relationship, while their deeper motives remain in the dark.

“Minority in majority”

bankleer, 4:30 min, 2011

The song of the music video “Minority in Majority” is about the collective departure of the Roma community from the Predlice district of Usti nad Laben, which is completely left to its own decay by the state: The run-down building facades are an expression of poverty and lack of prospects. Life there is marked by the exclusion and ghettoisation of the Roma population. “Minority in majority” opposes a spreading culture of corruption and apathy with a collective departure from these living conditions. This clip was produced in cooperation with Ondřej Darvaš and Maruška Darvašová.

“parisparis!”

Patrick Borchers, 2:27 min, 2018

“focus”

Andreas Drewer, 4:22 min, 2018

Light appears at the edge of a video image arranged in a circle four times. The light penetrates the image diffusely at first, then the working autofocus of the camera slowly forms the image of the moon, which wanders through the image section until it dissolves again. An abstract drawing becomes representational and abstract again.

In this video work, the work of the autofocus, the “seeing” of the camera, becomes a metaphorical image of a gradual process of understanding, in the centre a black square as a blind spot.

“debovary in Lichtenberg”

Debovary, 1 min, 2019

“The fragility of holding and letting go”

Dana Engfer, 4:23 min, 2019

Dana Engfer wants to invent mysterious, fragmentary visual worlds with her works of art. Engfer sees herself as a collector of various traces of time, memory and limbo. The video work “The fragility of holding and letting go” deals with the careful handling of strange yet familiar situations and actions. Engfer works with the tension between proximity and distance. The sound connects in a fragmentary way with the images and forces the tension between holding and letting go.

“The way up”

Anna Yermolaeva, 4:14 min, 2008

To the viewer of the video sculpture “The Way Up”, the tangle of rats in the glass cage of an animal market in Mexico City and their constant, futile striving for the top appears as a disturbing, metaphorical view of human behavior and its often seemingly animalistic “struggle for life” or “survival of the fittest”. The lovelessly pasted note Exportacion becomes a metaphorical warning sign. In the oppressive confrontation caused by the mass of animals and the hectic movement on the video, he recognizes his own behavior patterns. (Gaby Gappmayr)

“El Orgullo”

Verena Kyselka, 2:45 min, 2015

El Orgullo is the concept of the male ego in Mexico, externally recognizable by the gestures, facial expressions, clothing and especially shoes. In the forbidden cockfight the EL Orgullo comes to the fore with special expression. The fighting cocks have beside their own pride, the male pride of their owners in the fight. A hopeless, bloody fight in which usually no animal survives.

“BUM EVERYTHING”

Maria-Leena Räihälä, 2:29 min, 2016

Experiment with drawing series and different sounds:

Dog Sadie (recordings Zionskirchplatz 2015) / Blackbird (recordings Wollinerstraße 2012)