BELLEVUE
2007 / Single channel video installation / 4:3 / colour / sound / 9 min
Sound: Michaela Schwentner
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 Michaela Schwentner's 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 DESIRE, ACF New York 2011, LANDS END, Shedhalle Zurich 2010,
LANDSCAPE 2.0, Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg 2009, DEEP NORTH, Transmediale Berlin 2009
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ADAPTED RELATIONS
2013 / Installation / prepared table, projector, variable size / video 4:3 / loop
A projection equipment which has been turned into a space defining
sculpture,
an adjustment with a new prefix. A miniature, adapted for the small size of the K48 space and to the
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 in the internet via mouse-click. We can easily
watch a mountain peak from any place, from our studio without any effort.
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: K48, Vienna 2013
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 | Installation view K48 2013 |
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WORKS WITH SOUND / SOUND ARTISTS:
CHANTER TOUJOURS
2011 / Sound installation / Loop
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!
Installation: KRPYTOPHON, Hörstadt Linz 2011.
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COMPOSITION SET //
IMAGE TRANSFORMED //
MOZART MOVED
2006 / Single channel video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 1 min
Sound: Michaela Schwentner
Commissioned work for Mozartjahr 2006.
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 postcard with a bright frontal view of Mozart turns into a rough, decadent 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 at the beginning fades, the leaves shrivel, the tree disappears, the postcard with Mozart`s picture yellows and becomes a Mozart of stone.
A figure for the ages. The manipulation on the musical level was inspired by the musical dice game as played during Mozart`s day. The composer himself wrote short pieces and re-arranged the individual
measures according to a roll of the dice. The sound level of the film comprises short samples of the violin concerto #3 and symphony #38.
Screenings [selection]: Diagonale Graz 2007,
Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz 2007
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SWINGING
2006 / 2-channel video installation / 4:3 / colour / sound / 9 min
Sound: Michaela Schwentner
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)
Screenings [selection]: Diagonale Graz 2007, Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz 2007
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LA PETITE ILLUSION
2006 / Single channel video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 4 min
Sound: Michaela Schwentner
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 illusion», 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 «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)
Screenings [selection]: VIENNALE 2006, Diagonale Graz 2006,
Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz 2006
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DER KOPF DES VITUS BERING
2004 / Single channel video / 4:3 / b/w / sound / 5 min
Sound: Wallner.Stotz.Remsing
When Vitus Bering completed his circumnavigation of northeast Asia on 13 August 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)
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GIULIANA 64:03
2003 / Single channel video / 4:3 / b/w / sound / 3 min
Sound: Michaela Schwentner
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)
Screenings [selection]: Avanto Festival Helsinki 2003, Diagonale Graz 2004,
Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz 2004
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GIULIANA 64:03 on vimeo.
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VISUALISATIONS OF SOUND COMPOSITIONS
w/ Paul Clouvel (Elektra Music):
ELEMENTS II
2013 / Single channel video / 4:3 / b+w / sound / 8 min
MOUVEMENTS/CADUQUES III
2010 / Single channel video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 10 min
CANRANC
2010 / Single channel video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 12 min
SPEECH
2009 / Single channel video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 8 min
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w/ Radian:
TESTER
2004 / Single channel video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 6 min
JET
2003 / Single channel video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 6 min
R4
2000 / Single channel video / 4:3 / b/w / sound / 5 min
TRANSISTOR
2000 / Single channel video / 4:3 / b/w / sound / 5 min
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TRANSISTOR (excerpt) on vimeo.
w/ various:
THE FUTURE OF
HUMAN CONTAINMENT
2001 / Single channel video / 4:3 + 35mm / b/w / sound / 4 min
Sound: Pure
Screening at Sundance Independent Film Festival 2003 /
Section New Frontiers
TUCKER
2004 / Single channel video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 6 min
Sound: Charmant Rouge
HOW DO YOU WANT M.?
Part 3 of MAZY
2003 / Single channel video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 4 min
Sound: Heinz Dietsch
TAKE THE BUS
2002 / Single channel video / 4:3 / b/w / sound / 4 min
Sound: General Magic
#Z
2001 / Single channel video / 4:3 / colour / sound / 6 min
Sound: Fennesz
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HOW DO YOU WANT M.? on vimeo.
TAKE THE BUS on vimeo.
© michaela schwentner 2014
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CAMILLE
MYRTLE
