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Thorsten Fleisch | 26th Mar|Scala 9pm

Personal show by film and videomaker Thorsten Fleisch

followed by a music performance of his band
Malende

On first sight, his films are very abstract and conceptual. Thorsten Fleisch is working directly with materiality, which can be as analogue and direct as skin impressions or crystals growing on the surface of film surface (16mm), or as digitally generic as a reciprocal math formula that creates 4-dimensional forms, inter-cut with 3 dimensional space and finally shown on the 2-dimensional space of video screen. Material in that sense could also be the electric discharges and their traces on photographic paper. Thus following his workflow, it becomes evident, the author is working with a hybrid combination of analogue and digital image processing. However, and as he tells me, the analogue, or better saying material processes are allowing him to also use chance operations and mistakes (like a light flair on film stock) during the working procedures, whereas with code (or programming) a mistake will just result in a script-error, which has to be eliminated scrupulously instead of being able to be integrated in the creative process.

Just by reviewing the titles of his work, such as “Blutrausch” (blood rush), “Videohaut“ (video skin) “Friendly Fire”, “Kosmos” (cosmos) and “Gestalt” we may realize, on the other hand, that something more is going on with and within the artist’s working process. Without any pathos and drama in his making of, Thorsten Fleisch is lingering (or, shall we say loitering?) on existential and creational themes: light through the literally on film grown minerals are producing a pictorial cosmos, or the blood drawn from his own body is creating a (maybe delirious) rush of images. Trying to put it into a nutshell, one could say, body, creation and space are the themes of his work.

By taking an even closer look, one may also discover that the filmmaker is focusing onto a third yet to mention aspect: It is the sensuality in images that triggers his interest both in his own and in the work of others. One may call it old-school, it sometimes takes as much as a couple of years for its execution, and it may be similar to the meticulously composing and editing of the early Stan Brakhage (classic avant-garde filmmaker who combined all kinds of lens and lens-less effects with camera images to visual compositions), but it is that quality of painstakingly controlling the composing and composition towards pictorial expression that creates the quality of his films. What is new and contemporary in his work, Thorsten Fleisch uses any kind of hybrid techniques, thus challenging the meaning of the “expression of material.”

I prefer old-school and handcraftship to cold calculated superficiality, it makes me read the work on different levels while at the same time enjoying its pure sensations. In fact, Thorsten Fleisch’s work has been screened widely in galleries and on festivals including Directors Lounge.

Thorsten Fleisch will be present and available for Q&A after the screening.
Following the screening, the band … will give play …

program starts at 9 pm
doors open 8 pm

See you at the Scala, Friedrich Str. 112 A, 1st floor

• Directors Lounge an introduction