Directors Lounge at Mitte Media Festival 2019.

Radically Subjective.

A selection of Berlin filmmakers and artists who are friends of Directors Lounge and who have been screening their work on several occasions. Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr.

Berlin is turning into a filmmaker’s city again. We are not talking about mainstream cinema, but in terms of experimental and art production, there is a considerable growth. There are new places for film and video, new collaborations and a growing continuity. Directors Lounge is a proud part of it.

Many of the new works strive for a radical subjectivity, a presence by virtue of their images. The tradition of experimental film becomes renewed maybe in a turn against tendencies of documentation and documented activism in art. With a world out of joint, a search for a genuine form and subjective expression may be more important than before.

Reality, or rationality, for the sake of theory, may also be described as a form of radical subjectivity, following Keith Lehrer (American philosopher on epistemology), as it cannot be constituted only by knowledge and empirical evidence. Rationality is also based on an active construction of a world view, or a radical commitment to contemporariness. There is a reason, why dictators and anti-democratic movements mostly have turned against the contemporary art of their time, which also applies to right-wing populists, and religious fundamentalists. Subjectivity, image production by compositing, blending and merging create new views onto reality. Sometimes, however, it just needs a specific light, or the combination of two images in film montage in order to create a radically different view.

These films are radically subjective in a way that they constitute reality, or a contemporary world. The work of Deborah Uhde (“cockpit” 2014) looks at the developments around the subterranean nuclear depots of Sasse as a story of science fiction. Johnny Welch, on the other hand commits himself to a radical exploration of blackness in his video “Discharge Working II” 2018. Björn Speidel (“Wanderlust Iteration #1”) works with 3-D illusions, which not only create an illusion of space, but sometimes also of rotation. Gabriele Stellbaum films (“Heretofore”) seem to be narratives, but they turn into essays about contemporary human conflicts. Mélissa Faivre (“Underneath it all”) combines images to a stream of conscious and subconscious passage ways. Petra Lottje (“Kollwitz Goethe”) makes a self-portrait of Käthe Kollwitz speak a quote by J. W. Goethe using animation techniques.

Including works by Maria Korporal, Angela Christlieb, Björn Speidel, Dagie Brundert, Mélissa Faivre, Gabriele Stellbaum, Deborah Uhde, Marissa Rae Niederhauser, Johnny Welch, Jos Diegel, Petra Lottje and Deborah Phillips.

 

Mitte Media Festival  | Directors Lounge Presents:
“Radically Subjective”
Friday, April 19th, 9.15-11.15 pm
Fata Morgana Galerie – Front Room

 

Directors Lounge at Mitte Media Festival: Continuing The Dazzle
The complete Mitte Media Festival Schedule:  www.mittemediafestival.com