2020 / Performative setting + presentation (Installation + video (16:9 / colour / sound, 30 min)),
photographic series of 9 C-prints, 60cm x 40cm

Credits:
Concept | choreography | Edit | Colour correction | Sound design: Michaela Schwentner
Performer: Michaela Schwentner
Camera: Martin Putz

2020 / Installation / Mirror foil, wooden pallet, comb cardboard, orange and blue belt, sound mono 7:36 min

2020 / Solo exhibition / Tiroler Künstlerschaft, Neue Galerie, Innsbruck (A)

 

Masking [ISO 216 (DIN) AO]

Masking [ISO 216 (DIN) AO] is a project which negotiates forms of representation of desire, the absent, and with forms of human traces, imprint of man, particularly in nature, in landscapes. We inscribe ourselves whereever we go, act, live, over-write, cover, and thus leave marks. What does the vestige of our paths, actions and patterns look like?
The photographic series is the attempt of a poetic, condensed depiction of current reflections on the Anthropocene and what kind of marks humans leave on earth.
In the frame of a performative act a white rectangular sheet of cloth or paper sized DIN A0 is positioned in a natural environment – deliberately in a non-cultivated landscape –, held in front of the camera by a performer and by that, covers a field, a specific segment of the world. At the same time this action is an inscription into a spatial setting: The performer behind the mask is not seen but still leaves traces.
ISO 216, A series: A0 is an internationally standardised paper format which has become a technical convention and therefore is in a way universal.
A0 refers on the one hand to the letter A, the first one in the alphabet of our cultural environment (in Arabic: alif, in Hebrew: aleph), the beginning in general, the beginning of our cultural history, on the other hand to the sign 0, Zero, Null, Nothing: blank, projection surface – screen.

Masks are man-made and thus constitute a distinct opposite to nature – even if some masks definitely show mimetic features and attempt to imitate nature –; the mask: the screen, the sheet (of cloth, paper, etc) — the square angle is placed in the natural setting of landscape in a poetic form and asks what is possibly hidden behind, what is covered, or if it‘s the condensed rectangular evidence or sign of the Anthropocene, a Heideggerian Geviert (though I don‘t advocate Heidegger‘s thinking and opinions, still I find the term Geviert as ontological description mentionable in this context), too, a visualised way of thinking. Even the human body in this setting is masked, covered – only hands and feet can be seen — the performer is reduced to a carrier or supporter, an upholder.

White surfaces, often rectangular, are used in photography, like sheets for white balance or (white) reflector panels. With the applicaton of white rectangles in my photgraphic series I decidedly want to refer to specific processes within image production. Displaying work processes, conditions and mechanisms are recurrent principles of my artistic practice.

Masking [ISO 216 (DIN) AO], test performance

 

ASSEMBLY

Chairs or seats are parts of social settings: we always find arrangements of chairs/seats to organise collectives in communication, socially or politically participation, perception, education or administration processes or situations.
In this performance two performers assemble a variable, but rather large number of chairs of various forms and materials representing any kind of collective (such as audience, choir, socio-political forces, the people – society in general) configure and arrange them in different ways, re-configure and re-form these chair-assemblages in diverse ways trying to create an equilibrium. Since the two performers may have a different sense of balance, their individual arrangements would always be different.
The dialogue/interaction might be radical, trying, discoursive, diplomatic or gentle – the challenge is to achieve a state agreeable for both performers: If we want to change discomforting states or situations, we ourselves must act.
In the act of re-arranging, re-configuring, re-forming political and social mechanisms and their moving patterns are revealed. Social and political forces manifest themselves in new and diverse ways, some of dem repeated: it’s reproduction of history, mechanics and mechanisms, political measures and actions, social interactions, etc.

Assembly, performance, video stills



 

zwischen mir und der welt /
aufräumen

Hands in rubber gloves steadily re-arrange building blocks into new patterns.
On the voice over are testimonials from people on the Autism spectrum. Profound self-reflection makes it impossible to draw the line between normality and behaviour disorder, inviting a critical rethinking of systemic conditions and social power structures. (Michelle Koch, Diagonale catalogue 2020 entry)

The playful impression disappears quickly. The wooden blocks are, indeed, luminous and colourful as bonbons, but the hands that constantly rearrange the objects for the camera are in rubber gloves. The incessant piling and arranging, twisting, turning, and moving is reminiscent of a restless search for the “right” constellation.
“But what is normal, anyway?” asks the voice superimposed over this arranging in zwischen mir und der welt / aufräumen. In the film, Michaela Schwentner gives people who have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, more specifically, with Asperger syndrome, the chance to speak. They offer profound reflections on what isolates them from the so-called world out there, how their social handicap and the difficulties in communicating with others lead them to experience the disturbance as a prison. The limitations as well as the compulsion are reflected and intensified at the visual level: the organising of the geometric structures becomes a Sisyphean struggle; it is a symbol of the inability to grasp the structure of a social situation.
zwischen mir und der welt / aufräumen goes beyond the mere documentary element. When those affected by being stigmatised as “unnatural” or lacking empathy talk about hiding their “difference” and about Hans Asperger’s involvement in the eugenics of the Nazis at Spiegelgrund in Vienna, a flash of defiance emerges again and again, which casts doubt on the normalcy of dominant social systems. (Anne Katrin Feßler, sixpackfilm catalogue; translation: Lisa Rosenblatt)

zwischen mir und der welt / aufräumen, video still










 

What remains

In this poetic-technical installation setting of text-to-speech transference, excerpts from John R. Searle's The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse and Jacques Derrida's reply Signature Event Context which again was answered by Searle with Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida.
By text to speech to sound translation and dynamic interactive process the emitted smoke of 2 fog machines positioned opposite each other was controlled to a certain degree. The differently coloured clouds of smoke would merge and take on new forms before they diffuse, dissolve and finally disappear.
This illustrates aspects of construction and deconstruction, presence and absence, visible and invisible at the same time. Furthermore, in this process aspects of unpredictability, randomness, and stochastic interplay are visualised.
Memories are fiction:
Medial machines always reflect needs, motifs and phantasms and change us: by the use of, through échne the world is constituted, we construct the world in the particular contemporary way which contains the directorial, the imaginary and the poetic. This means, this work is both technical and poetic transference (of the visualisation) of a dialogue and its dissolution or displacement – the spoken word disappears. Why does the content not disappear, too? And if something remains, what exactly remains, what is it: ghost (in the meaning of phantom) or spirit? Nothing – in the sense of John Cage's no thing in his Zen Buddhism inspired Lecture on Nothing, but also in the sense of the ostensible dichotomy of absence / presence. Human spirit manifest itself through speech and writing. If the formal element, the sign, the signifier disappears, what remains? All those signs can be intertwined to what we call memory or memories. And what are memories, if not ghosts?

What remains, documentation image




 

Transform  She Said

In four episodes this film programme traces psychograms of female experiences and self assertion alternating with environment and world
as well as their filmic representation.
Films by VALIE EXPORT, Marianna Simnett, Martha Rosler, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Ana Hoffner, Ulrike Müller, Laure Prouvost, Michaela Schwentner

Giuliana 64:03, video still

 

Choreography
of the Frame

The exhibition Choreography of the Frame investigates and negotiates positions and strategies of image production – through conceptual or technical frameworks and shifts in the context of photography and moving image, images and statements are redefined and recontextualised.
The dissolution of established genre ascriptions, borders, and frameworks by individual artistic practices and strategies calls for a re-examination of the image.
Be it an enlarged photograph that takes on the dimensions of a wall or a space, a photograph that is folded into a sculpture, a photographic or filmic work that expands the mise-en-cadre to include or thematise the underlying conditions of image production – in all of the exhibited works the conventions are suspended, while the production process itself and its mechanisms, logics, and conditions are brought into focus.

Participating artists: Marwa Arsanios, Gwenneth Boelens, Maia Gusberti, Yasmina Haddad, Herbert Hofer, Tatiana Lecomte, Gabriela Löffel, Claudia Märzendorfer, Uriel Orlow, Petignat und Scholz, Michaela Schwentner, Lina Selander, Sophie Thun.

Exhibition views © Wolfgang Thaler 2018

Exhibition views © Michaela Schwentner 2018

 

PLAY pt. 1
The Rehearsal /
of William Shakespeare’s
Midsummer Night’s
Dream

The video PLAY pt 1. The Rehearsal shows the staging of a text source and
refers to one of the great narrations in the history of theatre in its subtitle. Here the organic-mechanic principle of repetition is replaced by the technical loop.

The Rehearsal, video still

PLAY pt. 2
L’absence est présente
(prototype version)

In PLAY pt 2. L’absence est présente a puzzle, after being put together, displays the text “L’absence est presente”. It’s the playful attempt to make the absent, the still invisible, the non-perceptible present by the generation of text.
The 2 video works PLAY pt 1. The Rehearsal and PLAY pt 2. L’absence est présente negotiate the philosophical aspect of absence and how it comes into presence by artistic interpretation, particularly by staging a play or a film. Both works question how absence can be glimpsed or displayed.
A play has specific structures and rules. Inbetween those structures — in the interplay of repetition — we can glimpse absence. In this flickering between presence and absence a space unfolds which enables the emergence of poiesis in a hermeneutic sense.
In my artistic practice I examine structures, mechanics and mechanisms of art and image production itself, mainly the frame conditions and production processes. In this context for me the central aspect is the rehearsal as basic element of the realisation of (mostly) text interpretations with their relevant issues and decision-making processes regarding possible forms of staging.
The artistic rehearsal is repeatable. This repeatability is enabled by the repeatability of once present experience in and by remembering — in the play the absent is always revealed and negotiated: the absence of death, of endlessness in the repeated or repeatable imagination (idea/eidos) or in our memory.

L’absence est présente (prototype version), video still

 

Chorprobe / Choir practice

In the frame of the residency project Was Anderes? I conceived a small piece for a choir. The reenactment of this choir practice was both choreography and social interaction as well as performance and rehearsal. This scenic fragment was the attempt to connect and combine our various approaches responding to the introducing question in a playful performative way, addressing communality, community and the collective itself. We performed and filmed the reenactment on site in Vairano. The result is the film fragment Chorprobe.

Facing the current populist developments in Western politics and society, it seemed to be useful and relevant to examine and revise popular and established terms in relation to their social and philosophical meaning. In order to grasp the notions of our time, we wanted to dispute these developments from an artistic perspective.
In an experimental setting, by collecting and developing methods of re-appropriating, re-connecting, re-understanding and embodying terms we investigated the experience of meaning of (socio)political terms.
Despite our diverse, individual ways of investigating and questioning we were collectively and continuously collaborating on instructions for an appropriate choreography within our social frame and on the depictions of personal strategies of social (inter)action. We were consistently searching, creating and collecting notions, vocabulary and ideas for our adaptive alphabet using new possibilities of perception, connotation, contextualisation and interpretation. An essential experimental stage of our reflections and investigations was learning and understanding by doing or acting: by taking action technical or social processes can be reconstructed, tracked or reenacted.

Zusammen (:) was anderes (!)
After 4 weeks of searching, collecting, comprehending and developing a new vocabulary, (self) investigations and developments of action strategies, we would be able to start the filling our abédédaire – C for Choir, Z for Zusammen, …

The Sasso residency collective in July/August 2017 consisted of performer Nicolas Galeazzi, artist Maia Gusberti, graphic designer Miriam Hempel, typographer and graphic designer Nik Thoenen and Michaela Schwentner.

Chorprobe / Choir practice, video still

 

Personne

This short film is a miniature about gazes and perception, about the experience of observing and being observed. It consists of just one long, tableau-like shot including a quarter circle pan shot. The narrative structure's vagueness suspends and questions the boundaries of reality and illusion.
What do we see, when we look? What do we see, when we watch? What do we learn, what do we know then? Can we rely on our perception, since it is just a partial aspect, one perspective of reality?
The vague and intimate staging creates a surreal, oneiric atmosphere accompanied by a mysterious effect which generates a confusing feeling – we are exposed to the act of observing and thus forced to be voyeurs.

The film is a kind of a "gestell" – a framework for reflections on the essentials and mechanics of film as well as on film production itself. In this sense, the make up scene reveals the actress's transformation into the film figure. Thus, it also refers to Eleanor Antin's video performance Representational Painting from 1971 in which the act of putting on make-up as a traditional mode of self-expression was explored and staged, amplifying the observational aspect.
Also, connections to Ingmar Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock are at hand when it comes to the concept of the figure(s): both figure and idea refer to Bergman’s Persona on the level of the internal conception, on the level of external conception to Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

The cinematic action that follows a prescribed plot was shot over the course of a day. Like in rehearsals, by repeating again and again iteratively the ideal take was worked out. Basically it‘s impossible to do exactly congruent repetitions, so every take within the scope of action is slightly different than others — even by the change of daylight throughout the day a different atmosphere and light situation was created.

The installation personne 1—7 negotiates aspects of film production itself (acting as work, rehearing, decision finding processes) as well as the construction or the backside of presentation. The frame (german: Gestell), the construction of the installation is partly exposed and by becoming visible turns into a part of the concept. 7 selected takes shown one after the other give an insight into the procedures of this particular film shooting. Thus, film production as well as acting or performing become the narrative subject and let us comprehend the realisation of the cinematic image.
The fragmented form of my film essays, which always means reflecting on film and its production in fragments, is mirrored in the installation.

Personne, video stills


Installation views: kunsthalle exnergasse 2018 © Wolfgang Thaler







 

reorient.manifest /
a model for a film

scenery: Mediterrenean, Italian or Greek territory, coastal area

stage direction: chorus 1 [behind the curtain]
where are we now?

instruction: chorus 2 [off-stage]
is this Europe?

instruction: chorus 1 [entering stage]
what is Europe?
myth?
spectre?

instruction: chorus 2 [entering stage]
democracy is protected order
a law of silence
security
security?

[randomly repeating]
control
censorship

instruction:
------------- pause

instruction: chorus 1 [normal voice]
this is an act of treason
Europe sells herself

instruction: chorus 2 [whispering]
our protest is silent
silent

instruction: chorus 1
what colour has protest?

instruction: chorus 2 [whispering]
our protest is black&white silence

instruction: chorus 1 [desirous, repeating]
o you are so technical!

instruction [voice lowered]
again!

chorus 1 [sighing]
o you are so technical!

instruction [voice tempered]
again!

chorus 1 [attempting]
o you are so technical!

instruction [expectant]
try again!

chorus 1 [distinct]
o you are so technical!

instruction: chorus 2 [repeating] ------- [critique]
what are we without technology?
   what are we without technology?

text insert:
what would Shakespeare say today?

instruction: refrain chorus 1 [repeating]
together we fail
together we fail
together we fail
together we fail

instruction: play song

instruction: refrain chorus 2
enter enter
everything depends on how you enter
enter enter

instruction: chorus 1
listen!
reorient ---------------

instruction: chorus 1 & chorus 2 [together]
act!

[reenact]

A model for a film. The set design is an assemblage of several small scenes.
The scenery includes some rather iconic images which refer to a sophisticated Europe and its highly developed state of civilisation with its democratic, political and critical consciousness.
Since it is to be feared that Europe is going to abandon its cultural standards, we as European citizens have to question this so-called system of values and even a lot more of our ideas.
This model film is supposed to be transformed into a musical performance with 2 chorus ensembles interpreting the dialogues.

 

Figures
(Women under influence)

The cinematic (action) image as a spatial object, providing a new perception and interpretation of mechanisms and structures of film production (like staging, acting, etc.): Cinematic images of iconic films featuring modern women under a certain kind of influence, though, are transferred into sculptures created of working and household tools.
By transference and the shifting of frames new reflections on aspects of work and conditions of artistic working processes may be initiated.
The asssemblages are named after the female leads of those particular films: Camille (Le mépris, J.-L. Godard, 1963), Martha (Martha, R. W. Fassbinder, 1974), Myrtle (Opening Night, John Cassavetes, 1977), Catherine (Jules et Jim, François Truffaut, 1962) and Giuliana (Il deserto rosso, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964).

The depictions of the arrangements don‘t provide possibilities of identification; the female film figures are not recognisable as such; instead these assemblages are complex images: the film concept, the tension of the plot and of the key scene as well as entire distances and motion sequences the protagonists cover are incorporated, condensed in a way. Thus, the meaning of body is questioned: How much knowledge informs a body, makes it tangible, experiencable, comprehensible, recognisable? A body is not just a physical sensation, a physical appearance, but also storage for all kinds of information (which over time is inscribed in the body). How much knowledge informs a body, makes it tangible, experiencable, comprehensible, recognisable?

fig. 1-5: Camille, Myrtle, Martha, Giuliana, Catherine (from top left to bottom left)



GRUPPENBILD I

 

Camille 1–3

What makes a cinematic figure? Why is it that not any actress or performer is able to play every role or character?
The short film essay Camille 1—3 is a demonstration of variations of performance (in the sense of acting but also in the sense of efficiency). It offers the possibility to watch 3 performers playing the same role repeatedly, filmed in different takes and to compare them. How much contributes the particular performer herself, how much is stage direction?
In Camille 1—3 the being-outside-the-role is essential component of the concept; only when one of the performers wears the bathrobe she is playing (the role).
This piece is at the same time reenactment of a film shooting, and hence the reenactment of Camille‘s role, a reenactment of an actress‘ acting abilities, a reenactment of Brigitte Bardot‘s performance and furthermore a demonstration of variations of acting.
Furthermore, content-related it is the performed act of Camille‘s emancipation, extracted and isolated, and repeated over and over again..

Traces of Camille, sketches

 

Playing Martha (Augarten version)

Fragmentary reenactment of the renowned 720º scene from Martha by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, shot by his cinematographer Michael Ballhaus.
The camera shot is transformed into an installative performance with a variable amount of performers and each of their particular interpretation and enactment of Martha, actually their individual mode of slipping into a role by putting on a specific figure's costume.

Playing Martha, performance documentation, video stills



 

IMAfiction portrait #08 Electric Indigo

Video portrait of electronic music dj and composer Electric Indigo.
Camera: Andreas Gockel, Michaela Schwentner.
Commissioned by IMA Institute of Media Archeology.

IMAfiction portrait #08, video stills

 

Descending a staircase / in shifts

A woman in a yellow bathrobe is descending a staircase - over and over again. This image of action refers to the film scene from Le mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963). The main "character" is in fact the significant prop of the scene, the yellow bathrobe. The scene is performed by 3 different performers over the course of a day. The piece is at the same time the reenactment of a film shooting, and hence the reenactment of Camille's role, a reenactment of an actress' work, a reenactment of Brigitte Bardot's performance and furthermore a demonstration of variations of acting. It is the reenactment of the work of an actress, a spatial intervention, a performance, the actual work of the performers and the video installation in public space.

Descending a staircase / in shifts, video stills



From left to right: Making of © Julia Vogt, Making of © dorftv, Installation view © Norbert Artner






 

Penelope /
in the scenery /
reflecting /
relations.

Penelope (Camille (Brigitte (Anna))):
Everything happened in the dizziness of a high
Our love was so vast
Everything was new and exciting
[break]
It was so good.

Direction:
Again!

Penelope (Camille (Brigitte (Anna))):
Everything happened in the dizziness of a high
Our love was so vast!
Everything was new and exciting
  [sigh]
It was so good!

Direction:
Again!

The film shows two women sitting in the scenery of a theatre or in the backdrop of a film set. It's not clear whether they are already acting or waiting for their scene, trying to kill time by telling stories and reflecting on film-immanent matters.
Are they outside their role, outside the film set or are they acting in a film which is about two women playing in a play or a film, waiting for their scene and telling stories which (seemingly) have nothing to do with the situation they are in? Are they rehearsing?
Repeatedly text inserts are displayed which show stage directions but also questions addressing the lead figure Penelope, asked by an invisible audience or other film figures as well as her reactions on them.
Some scenes are repeated several times, but still it is not a rehearsal, but instead a film that uses montage of image and sound to transfer figures from one context into another or a new one and by that question the previous one and furthermore question the production per se and its aesthetic realisation.

This film is on the one hand about Penelope, told from a contemporary and emancipated perspective, and on the other hand about storytelling, staging and playing itself: Penelope is knotting and interweaving fragments of her personal love stories, while she is also reflecting on film, acting and narration per se by retelling stories and by reenacting several iconic film scenes.
Fragments of stories are interlinked and interwoven to assemblages. These fragmented and
re-arranged narrative threads which refer to different contexts create a new narration-image. The level of narrative partly follows the principle of the mise en abîme. The formal level also follows this principle and consists of fragmented images and reflections. The reflection on narration and on projection has its equivalent on the formal level in the sense of mirroring.

The film can also be read as a passionate tribute to film and film-making, as a reflection on film-making, the interest in modernism and its reproductive technicality. It also shows by recontectualising several iconic film scenes that film production is always connected with the time present.

Penelope, video stills







 

The Contest

This film is both cinematic reconstruction and staging and refers to a pop-cultural moment of 20th century history. I was interested in the intersection of historic moments and aesthetical practices and in the examination of our relationship to collective historic and visual experience. In a sequence of about five minutes The Contest shows two young female performers in a gymnastic performance situation. The minimalistic setting of the scene filmed in a real but still staged studio unfolds in static shots and shows the performers primarily in long shots by considering the symmetry of the image.
The performers' movements equal real practising movements of figures skaters, still the reduced image composition lets the choreography appear somehow artificial.
The formal aesthetic approach to the historic event which is grounded in the collective memory and visual archive on one hand and to the presentation of subjective experience on the other hand result in a stylised image which is supposed to merge into a timeless form. It was not my intention though, to dissolve the historic event in the aesthetic, but to objectify it by reducing all narrative moments.
The negotiated historic event was a spectacular case in the history of US-American figure skating: during a decider preparation for a championship one of two rivals was attacked and incapacitated; the other athlete got linked with the attack and was subsequently suspended from all further championships.

The Contest, video stills







 

A STONE /
A WORD /
ACTIVATED /
BY

ABDUL SHARIF BARUWA // EVA BODNAR // HERBERT DE COLLE // PLAMEN DEJANOFF // HEINRICH DUNST // MARINA FAUST // VERONIKA HAUER // GERHARD HIMMER // SIGGI HOFER // NICOLAS JASMIN // DANIEL KNORR // ELKE SILVIA KRYSTUFEK // SONIA LEIMER // JOHANN LURF // CHRISTIAN MAYER // ALBERT MAYR //JOSH MÜLLER // MICHAEL PART // ELISABETH PENKER // ROMAN PFEFFER // JOSEF RAMASEDER // BERNHARD RAPPOLD // FRANZ SCHUBERT // CONSTANZE SCHWEIGER // MICHAELA SCHWENTNER // AXEL STOCKBURGER // CHRISTIAN STOCK

2014 / Frottage, Blickle Raum, Vienna

 

re-PARADISE /
reconstruction of botanical archives
by reenacting representative complexities
in history

Paradise: a state, a place, a garden, a greenhouse, a gift, a souvenir, colonised land, uprooted life? This photographic work is based on botanical gardens in the Western world, mainly in Europe. I was interested in the plants themselves and their existence as mute witnesses of (historical) political conquest.
The prefix re- in the work title refers to the reconstruction of an idea, an image, to the technical reproduction of the photographic material, on the other hand it is associated with the term repair which refers to Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History. Repair is to be understood in a cultural, political or natural sense, but also as a
socio-cultural, gender-geometric concept. All depicted plants (monstera deliciosa, ficus elastica, dypsis lutescens, livistona rotundifolia, banana) originate from regions which have been — and often still are — colonised and exploited by the Western world. Thus, these plants found their ways to botanical gardens for research and educational reasons or to our living spaces for decorative purposes and simple pleasure. Walter Benjamin wrote, history only can be reconstructed when presence is manifest within. Thus, the botanical garden as an archive is useful for research and to comprehend the complexities of representation and to reconstruct history. Conflicts from the past can’t be rectified ex post facto, but our approach to history can be changed by contemporary reflection which might include reappropriation and repair.

re-PARADISE / reconstructing botanical archives by representative complexities in history into moments of desire N°6-N°9.
N°6 acquired by Sammlung Wien Museum (2019)

 

re-PARADISE /
trouble in paradise

2019 / Baryt print / 40cm x 30cm

 

re-PARADISE /
reconstructing archives by rendering representative
complexities into moments of desire

In this installation photographed content of botanical archives is transferred into actual context. In addition to digital b/w prints "archived" techniques, technologies and materials are used, like transmission oil, a petroleum distillate, as well as developing trays.
Oil seals material and timeliness like film. Film, the coat, transparent and impermeable like varnish, fixates and secures a painting, carries and transports (moving) images - film. The pictures which were made in botanical gardens refer - like a botanical garden itself – to something absent or past: plants as witnesses of colonial conquest, diplomatic, political, representative strategies.
The aspiration to fill a gap, to turn the significate into the sign itself, to manifest the referential; to fulfil the desire for transferring the absent or the past into something representative shifted, is the idea of this poetic-technical arrangement.
Representative complexities create projection spaces and consist of superpositions, layerings, fragmentations and ambiguities in a social, historic, theoretic or interpretative sense. The assembled images in the exhibition are layered shots, originally taken in various botanical archives, which want to create a space of longing in this specific display.

Installation view and performance documentation details. ANNA offspace, Vienna, 2018

 

In the remaking —
After Jeanne Dielman,
23 quai du Commerce,
1080 Bruxelles
(in progress)

In the remaking is an essay film that reflects the process of film making and
its mechanisms. Reenacting the making of the film, this work demonstrates my ongoing examination of personal and historic (collective) memory and the transformation of the mechanics of film into a work with poetic potential.

Filmstill Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (D: Chantal Akerman)

 

Un divertissement
d'amour

This film is a kind of rearrangement of Plato's Symposion based on philosophic essays on love and it is also inspired by the Surrealists' Recherches sur la sexualité.
The film structure refers specifically to Sergej M. Eisenstein's definition of the mise en cadre and concentrates precisely on the possibilities of revealing or hiding substantial film-immanent information.

Un divertissement d'amour, video stills







 

26 days

This work was created during my residency at a remote place near Rome.
It emerged from the situation I was in there for the period of four weeks.
The work was an examination of experiencing time and transience and its
impact on me.

 

re-PARADISE /
The Camp

30-40 plants of different sizes and proveniences in pots (palm trees, ficus elastica, marginatas, fejkas, figue trees, bananas, etc.) are arranged in a rectangle under a tent made of transparent plastic planes to protect them from heavy rainfalls.

The plants stand close with only little space between them. So it’s not really possible or easy for people to move between the plants, apart from the aspect of inconvenience there’s also the aspect of respect (risk of damaging the plants) and restriction (what does it mean to be not allowed to enter a space, even if it’s "just" plants?). How do plants grow under new, unknown conditions?

 

re-PARADISE /
BILLBOARD. prospects modifiés

Modified version of the film essay Prospects (2011). The term prospect is used in a more condensed way, in the way of a promise, in the way travel agencies use it for their holiday offers. For this work interviews from the essay have been reduced to simple, catchy slogans.

 

re-PARADISE /
Prospects.split

A film essay about women in the Mediterranean and their concepts of paradise.
It consists of interviews with women from this area and images of paradisiac places like public parks, private gardens, botanic gardens.
The video is an assemblage of these images and the interviews and it is accompanied by field recordings and subtle sound pieces which have been composed particularly for this work.

Installation view Kulturbrücke Fratres [A/CZ]

 

re-PARADISE /
La route du paradis

Side project of Prospects. The map of fixing pins shows the cities in the Mediterranean area I visited for my research and interview work.

 

re-PARADISE /
It will all be differerent

Error correction by repetition?
Or realisation by repetition?
Can a wish become true if you repeatedly write it down some hundred times?

 

autoradio

Live radio broadcast of a sound performance in the frame of Reheat Festival at Kleylehof Nickelsdorf, Austria.
The situation of a drive-in cinema was converted into a drive-in radio broadcast.
The live sound performance was broadcast via local radio frequencies and received via radios in cars parked at the venue. In German the pun makes more sense: the autokino is turned into an autoradio (which also means car radio).

 

Des souvenirs vagues

Des souvenirs vagues is a film essay about visual memories and their repetitions, shifts and refractions and about desire. Even the choice of the film material and aesthetics is an utterance of desire: the seemingly analog film aesthetics has been created digitally. In this way it corresponds to desire as a longing for past times with the only existence of analog film. It’s also a poetic reference, a blank which senses desire, which refers to an unknown, an unpronounceable desire.
The film's main elements are vaguely remembered, kind of stereotyped scenes en miniature – they could be from a film, but also someone's personal memories or desires.
Like in many of my works this film negotiates (re)constructions of female role models, depictions and images of women which are formed by the absence of the body and by almost pure reflection. In this way, only traces or fragments of actions or the body are perceptible.

Des souvenirs vagues, video stills



 

Adapted relations

A projection equipment which has been turned into a space-defining sculpture, an adjustment with a new prefix. A miniature, adapted for a small sized exhibition space and its site-specific conditions.
The projected film itself is a demonstration of adapted relations: Images which were produced by webcams and saved, collected, sorted, assembled and animated, are available via mouse-click.
The poetic moment is generated from the apparatus, the installation, the illusionist machine, is detected. The apparatus is moved in its true light and therefore into the centre of perception.

Installation view K48, Vienna 2013



 

Alpine passage

Alpine Passage is a film comprising individual images about a journey across the
Swiss and Austrian Alps. The mountains, impressive as a painting, and in front
of them a sort of architecture that enables either a panoramic or a close view.

Alpine passage, video stills

 

Bellevue

Snow, fog, clouds and in the midst of it all, a barely perceptible massif. Or, better yet, a white noise from which contours gradually emerge and just as steadily dissolve back into: As though ghost lights in the digital image-fog that dominates the expanse of this composition. A mountain peak, only vaguely discernible for the longest time, that halfway disappears again the moment it appears.
The starting material for Bellevue are webcam recordings from Grossglockner that she collected for months and condensed into a nine-minute time image.
Schwentner's method benefits from the rigid takes, mainly because within them, the interplay of appearing and eluding, of revealing and concealing, can develop the greatest possible effect. Thus, the figure of the mountain uncovers and covers itself in a constant, modulating movement: ridges and slopes peel from the whiteness of the surroundings, to then immediately vanish again within it.
Accompanied by a subtle ambient-like rustle, which Schwentner gathered from the direct transformation of the image into sound data, the vision continually clears up and becomes disarranged. As though the mountain, seen and photographed millions of times, does not want to disclose its identity so simply; yes, as though the apparently banal weather panorama recordings harbor a key of sorts to the disappearance of the supposedly most unchangeable natural things.
The beautiful view is fundamentally blurred as a result of Bellevue. Not by things incidentally blocking it, such as snow, fog, or clouds, but by a basic instability in the process of (electronic) seeing itself. The more persistently it pursues the phenomena, the more they keep themselves covered from time to time. (Christian Höller)

Alpine passage, video stills



 

Noctiluca

Commissioned audiovisual work for RML CineChamber [w/ Peter Rehberg].
Live presentation premiered at musikprotokoll / steirischer herbst Graz 2011.

Watch excerpt on vimeo

Adapted version at KLANGMANIFESTE 2014, k/haus passage Vienna, documentation images

 

Chanter toujours

The sound installation Chanter toujours is an allegory: a special sound is extracted from its original context and is transformed into an new one: the always singing cricket prolongs the summer and should be – as sound intervention – hopefully a nice surprise in the cold season. At the same time Chanter toujours is an infinitive invitation to sing or make sound - more and almost any time!

 

Composition set //
image transformed //
Mozart moved

The idea was to transform a picture of Mozart on the basis of a new composition arranged with the so-called musical dice game, sound-controlled manipulation and also a dismantling of the common clean and kitschy Mozart image.
A bright frontal picture postcard view of a Mozart statue is turned into a rough, decaying picture. This turnaround within an extremely short period of time also represents life's progress and decay. The alteration is equivalent to a life cycle: The lush color from the beginning fades, the leaves shrivel, the tree disappears, the postcard with Mozart's picture yellows and becomes a Mozart of stone.
The manipulation on the musical level was inspired by the musical dice game as played in Mozart's days.
The composer himself wrote short pieces and re-arranged the individual measures according to a roll of the dice. For the film short samples of violin concerto #3 and symphony #38 have been used and processed.

Composition set // image transformed // Mozart moved, video stills

 

Swinging

A bridge with an arched metal structure stretching over it is visible on a white field. The colours are subdued - grey and black, various shades of brown, blue and green – though they seem quite intense on the light background. The places connected by the bridge aren't visible; portrayed as an isolated structure, it becomes the focus of an analysis in the medium of film.
In contrast to some of the other videos made by Michaela Schwentner, the subject is easily recognisable in this case. At the same time the artist discovers an individual life in the architecture, which lets the concrete form slip into abstract patterns. The perspective shifts repeatedly, and different views of the structure appear. One shot fades into the next, and the movement of the pixels can literally be observed. This creates graphic and painterly moments, the play of light and shadow, lines and planes turns into a hypnotic game of deception.
The camera's gaze is directed at the structure's details and unusual views so that individual portions of the bridge no longer seem to be bound to a certain function, and other fields of association open up in its formal structures. The geometric shapes resemble sketches, the cables between the bridge and its superstructure are like drawn lines, which lends the originally monumental structure of concrete and steel something fragile, translucent and with that a buoyant lightness.
In contrast to a sketch, however, swinging also makes the three-dimensional character of its subject tangible, not least through the use of the soundtrack which was also created by Michaela Schwentner. The shimmering of the dimensions and the materiality of the representation are underlined by the audio level. Each kind of material seems to have its own characteristic sound, and after electronic alteration it creates an acoustic landscape surrounding the bridge, which seems to «swing» from time to time. (Andrea Pollach)

Swinging, video stills



 

La petite illusion

A little story of passions is told in La petite illusion: heavy breathing garnished
by a jazzy bass line, a kiss, a woman falls into water at night.
While the work's title is an ironic reference to Jean Renoir's 1937 La grande illusio, the association is a dead end: Neither the images nor the soundtrack contains a direct quotation of Renoir's pacifist fable, nor is a similar motif touched upon. The patina of early sound film which is celebrated in La petite illusion stands as the sole vague connection to the La grande illusion - the sound and the look, the aesthetic stereotypes of Francophone cinema made between the wars.
Michaela Schwentner`s chromatically ascetic electronic manipulation of found sounds and images is a study of emotional images from the history of cinema which is carefully kept in the air. The story told in La petite illusion is itself a kind of little illusion: It has the mere suggestion of a plot, a kind of mini-melodrama with built-in interference. While the narrative lines remain unresolved, irrationally linked as if in a dream, the film's images themselves become unstable: They seem to melt, run into one another; just after coming together they fall apart, speed up, slow down, hammered with the artist's omnipresent influence. Animated Cubism is the term she gave to her work method: The flat film images are committed to a virtual digital space, a different kind of illusion, and the material is released into a state of partial abstraction. In the referential space, filled with romantic ruins of images, fragments of emotional declamation and salon conversation in French, with canned music and the bright singing of anonymous film divas, emotions are transformed into signals, and the individual parts of trivial film tragedies are translated back into neutral cinematic symbols. (Stefan Grissemann)

La petite illusion, video stills

 

Der Kopf des Vitus Bering

When Vitus Bering completed his circumnavigation of northeast Asia on
August 13, 1728 to prove that Asia and America are two separate continents, the coast of America was covered in fog and remained largely invisible to the discoverer.
On the tracks of discovery and at the same time groping through the dark; a confusing state, the various levels of which are made evident in Michaela Schwentner's video the head of Vitus Bering. The picture shows the black silhouette of a landscape emerging from a brilliant white. The landscape is grouped on a horizontal and in some places also on a vertical axis. It changes, seems to oscillate between various aggregate states. Forms become visible or invisible; colors fluctuate between white-gray-black. A type of fata morgana in a desert of ice.
Also the sound and the text make reference to a state of madness - or at least heightened sensibility; the violin bows are tense, the voices entangle and distort.
Konrad Bayer's text Der Kopf des Vitus Bering (1958 ff), which provides all of the quotations, is Schwentner's immediate reference point. Bayer is interested in the figure of Bering as a location from which relations can be created and quotes André Breton, according to whom reality is not the sum of the facts, but rather, the sum of possibilities. Bayer's text is a mosaic of facts, thus on the one hand history – and on the other, thoughts and speculations, mounted according to strict rules. He creates a dense atmosphere whose quality lies in the gaps that hold the knowledge of wealth, of reality. Also Schwentner's video breathes this intensity; text, sound, and image combine to something greater than the sum of what happens and what is heard. It presents the abundance in its emptiness. (Sylvia Szely)

Der Kopf des Vitus Bering, video still



 

Giuliana 64:03

On a white background, black rectangles fall from the left upper edge of the picture. They amass to form larger surfaces, to then immediately thereafter shrink or shift on top of one another, and from time to time be lifted off each other by thin white lines. Similar to the cinema screen, the rectangular surfaces carry the schematic, digitally processed image of a woman, which is difficult to recognize as such. Instead, its large-pixel outline merges with the abstract forms, which constantly form anew. Like in a puzzle, individual facial details show up in different places; the various parts are continually put together, yet without ever revealing a completed picture.
The stark, reduced soundtrack, which stems from Antonioni's Il deserto rosso, as does the initial visual material, emphasises the clarity of the images and opens the gaze to the constantly changing forms.
The face – reduced to flickering black and white areas – takes its place in this strict composition. At one point, the picture becomes almost completely black from the steady overlapping of different layers. Shortly thereafter, the schematic contours of the face push into the field of vision. In the end it seems to have almost won out over the abstract forms. This impression is supported by the replacement of the noise on the soundtrack with human voices. However, before the music (which begins suddenly), can spread out, and the black and white contours become completely recognizable as the reproduction of a human form, they turn quickly to the side and the picture disappears into the blackness. (Corinna Reicher)

Giuliana 64:03, video stills

 

XX Y X

Experimental series of new and diverse formats and forms of representation,
fostering predominantly cooperations of female visual and sound artists

postponed due to covid-19 measures:
Electric Indigo album presentation Ferrum + CHRA solo show
grillx, Vienna

autumn 2020 8pm:
Martin Brandlmayr: Vive les fantômes
echoraum, Vienna

07 10 2020 8pm:
FRANZ STUTTGART (Billy Roisz + Anat Stainberg): Highlights and Headaches (radio play)
echoraum, Vienna

13 10 2020 6pm:
Nina Vobruba + Michaela Schwentner: ASSEMBLY (The black chair issue)
durational performance + djs Inou Ki Endo, Brigitta Bödenauer, Lumplecker
echoraum, Vienna

12 11 2020 8pm:
Cherry Sunkist/Karin Fisslthaler WOMEN (A/V live performance)
echoraum, Vienna

 

VISUALISATION OF SOUND / COMPOSITIONS

w/ Paul Clouvel
(Elektra Music)

Elements II 2013 / Video / 4:3 / b+w / sound / 8 min
Mouvements/caduques III 2010 / Video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 10 min
Canranc 2010 / Video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 12 min
Speech 2009 / Video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 8 min

 

w/ Radian

Tester 2004 / Vvideo / 4:3 / colour / sound / 6 min
Jet 2003 / Video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 6 min
r4 2000 / Video / 4:3 / b+w / sound / 5 min
Transistor 2000 / Video / 4:3 / b+w / sound / 5 min

Watch an excerpt of Transistor on vimeo

 

w/ various

The future of human containment
2001 / Video 4:3 + 35mm / b+w / sound / 4 min, sound: Pure

Tucker
2004 / Video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 6 min, sound: Charmant Rouge

How do you want M.?
2003 / Video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 4 min, sound: Heinz Dietsch

Take the bus
2002 / Video / 4:3 / b+w / sound / 4 min, sound: General Magic

#Z
2001 / Video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 6 min, sound: Fennesz

© michaela schwentner 2019
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