Heiko ahoy!

Heiko Daxl has always been fascinated by motion. Images in motion, media in motion, and, like the center of his interest, he himself has always been in motion. Constantly creating new films, triggering projects, curating and cooperating throughout the world.

It would need a big book to cover all his activities, from the co-founding of the Experimental Film Workshop Osnabrueck back in 1980,  an annual festival for experimental film art, which in 1988 became the European Media Art Festival, to this year´s exhibition at his latest art space, mim-and-more.

He, together with his wife and partner, Ingeborg Fuelepp, was always searching for new experiments, joyfully presenting their latest discoveries.

Friends of Directors Lounge will remember many films and curated programs by this Dream Team. Since our early years they have been regulars till today.

Heiko Daxl passed away last Monday.

He will remain among us, frolicking in an art world that wouldn’t be the same without him.

Team DL

directors lounge monthly screenings

“Die Gegenwart ist nicht die Wirklichkeit”
Present doesn’t Equal Reality

Heiko Daxl und Ingeborg Fülepp
Single Channel Video Works

Thursday, 26 Nov. 2009

21:00
Z-Bar Bergstraße 2

10115 Berlin-Mitte

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Present doesn’t Equal Reality

Cinema – Train – Travel – Knowledge – Memory – Perception, these are terms from descriptions of video films by Heiko Daxl and Ingeborg Fülepp. In a nutshell, one could say: it all concerns vision. How has human vision, or better saying visual perception, changed since the invention of cinema and the later developments of all the forthcoming image machines? There is a reason, this program starts with the film “Le Cinema – le Train”, where the filmmakers make the analogy between the views out of the train windows while travelling, as Victor Hugo was describing it (1837) and the experience of film: “The flowers on the edge of the fields are colour spots, or better saying red and white stripes; there are no dots any more, everything turns into stripes. Crop fields become yellow streaks, clover fields appear as long green braids…”

In the ways the two artist feed their “image machines” with texts, it becomes obvious they take vision, or ‘viewing’ as serious matter: there is the connection with opinions, conceptions, point of view and perceptions, all of which in German language have a root in seeing or viewing (Ansichten, Anschauungen, Standpunkte und Sichtweisen). The plurals are intentional here, as with Flusser, it is possible to say that the camera does not allow ideological thinking, as it is not compatible with a single point of view. The art practise of Daxl and Fülepp seems to follow those lines accordingly, as almost with every new video work they experiment with new perspectives; a practise that is not constrained to camera images but that expands to abstractions, compositing and generated imaging. The sources of those images originate in travels, quotes and observations, while they are being processed heavily in post-production. If they appear as simulacra, as simulated worlds, then in does not happen without a critical sometimes ironic distancing. Thus it becomes clear that there still is something else behind those images. Something possibly lost, or conversely, still to be achieved, and which cannot be shown otherwise. Still, with Heiko and Ingeborg, we keep staying very this-worldly: to say it with an adapted quote of Wittgenstein, ‘whereof one cannot portrait in an image, thereof one must not try to picture.’

Thus, the two artists leave us in ambivalence between fascinating image worlds and ironic distance, and the liberty of choices of which perspectives onto the world, which kinds of reality we take on from the films.

What is left to mention is that for their work both artist, who work both independently and together, mostly seek for collaborations with composers from New Music or Noise background, and thus see their works as collaborative sound-image compositions.

The artists will be present for Q&A and for socialising after the screening.
(Klaus W. Eisenlohr)

More infos and images:
http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/

Press Links:
http://www.directorslounge.net

http://www.z-bar.de

Artist Links:

media in motion berlin:
http://www.mediainmotion.de

Media-Scape – Zagreb / Novigrad (Cittánova):
http://www.mediascape.info

Strictly Berlin:
http://www.strictly-berlin.de

X-OP
http://www.x-op.eu