Klaus W. Eisenlohr - Page 13 of 15

Directors Lounge special screening:

CHRISTINA MCPHEE
The Delicate Landscape of Crisis
at REMISE
FREIES MUSEUM BERLIN
April 15, 2011

A premier survey of California-based McPhee’s experimental films from 2002-2011 will screen at 21:00 , 15 April , 2011 at Freies Museum, Potsdamer Strasse 91 Berlin http://www.freies-museum.com/
Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr of Director’s Lounge, Berlin.

“Delicate structures arise in the transport of trauma”: Christina McPhee traces landscapes of crisis, performing video montage like drawings in a data-field. From earthquake landscapes in the California desert, to Ground Zero in New York, to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, McPhee tracks the intimate topographies of environmental crisis in America. McPhee (b. 1954 Los Angeles) is a visual and media artist whose films have shown most recently at Art Cologne OpenSpace with Vernissage.tv; Director’s Lounge, Berlin; Cinéphèmère at the Tuileries for FIAC, Paris; San Francisco Cinematheque, and ISEA, Belfast. Christina McPhee is represented by Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

“ McPhee…imbues documentary realism with subjective evocation to such an extent that the project effectively displaces the importance of the documentary imag°òs indexicality… Still photographs, composited images and video clips of the landscape, environment and vernacular shrines allow the viewer to piece together the relationship between geological instability and psychological trauma…. ”
Sharon LIn Tay, film critic, London (Studies in Documentary Film 2008)

http://www.directorslounge.net
http://www.freies-museum.com/
http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/index.html

with support from Walden http://www.galerie-walden.de/
and Galerie Suomesta http://www.suomestagalleria.net/

Directors Lounge Screening at Z-Bar

Thursday, 24 March 2011

Seppo Renvall
Times, Songs and Material
16mm films and video

21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

“Never very good technical quality“, "no sharp image“, "no tripod“, "everything kind of shaky“, "mainly things that are not interesting“, "no story“, "no one idea“ – when reading these quotes from Seppo Renvall on his own films, one could think he is practising some kind of anti-aesthetic. However, Seppo Renvall does not want to cause offence or a scandal. Rather, his "negativity“ is set against the grand gestures that predominate media, and the superlatives "most“, "best“ and "highest“ required by the art scene. Theodor Adorno uses the term "negativity“ in conjunction with resistance and connected with a countenance that does not allow reconciliation with the power, or the "wrong“ social situation. Since then, times have changed and this society may not any more require a "life in alert“ (Walter Benjamin) but now urges a life in agitation. Seppo’s negativity seems to be more gentle, and seems to function more as a shield or as subversion against that constant state of arousal the media and the art world expect from the arts and the artists.

"If something interesting is happening, I possibly decide to shoot in the opposite direction“, and often he finds something more subtle, more telling than the spectacle ahead. His sympathy goes to the little things in life, or maybe I should say: empathy. His films thus carry his empathy to the small situations in daily life. As a consequence, part of his work is made of home movies showing scenes with friends, family life, children and travel, shot and shown on 16mm.

The themes of his other films are quite divers but still connected with daily life, even if they seem to embrace the spectacle, like "Nonstoppampam“. In this (in original) 3-channel work, an array of gunshots is fired in rapid succession. We possibly need to know the fact that these people shoot with a real gun for the first time in their life in order to see, what S. Renvall was mainly interested in: the awes, the hesitation, the threat and the surprise on the recoil forces reflected on their faces “Exotique” and “Yötähteni” talk about spaces of in-between, between light and shadow, night and day, unconscious and waking. Combined with the music of Aslak Christianson and others, many of these films, mostly edited on video, become songs, rhapsodies of life and a strong subversion of the mirror, which the TV screen seems to be for us.

Seppo Renvall will be present for Q&A.

Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr
With support from Suomesta Galerie, Berlin

More infos at:

http://www.richfilm.de/filmUpload/1-framesSeppo.html

http://www.z-bar.de/
http://open.fixc.fi/public.php?nid_send=271&uid_send=15
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Suomesta-galerie/117934471569793

Programme:

16mm

Home Movies 4 2:00

Home Movies 1-3 7:00

Private Area 3:49

Video

The Price Of Our Liberty 08:09

Warm Front 5:24

Iris And Nalle 2:53

Planet Earth Encyclopedia 6:13

Dancing Shortly 1:13

Exotique 09:57

Dancing Shortly II 2:45

Drum Zymphony 21:15

Nonstop PamPam 4:20

Yötähteni 2:30

Wed 16th 7pm

Interventions – The Spaces of Politics

Terrorsounds by Jacob Kirchheim

Terrorsounds by Jacob Kirchheim and Teresa Delgado

Andrew Norman Wilson US Workers Leaving the Googleplex 11min 59s 2010

Jacob Kirchheim, Teresa Delgado DE Terrorsounds 6min 2010

Masha Godovannaya RU 40 10min 40s 2010

Pilar Ortiz X CL Circunvalación 33min 2010

Shalalae Jamil PK Watching Wheels 5min 30s 2010-2011

Tom Skipp ES Antioch – Florent on the Bridge 9min 26s 2010

curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr

Antioch by Tom Skipp

Antioch – Florent on the Bridge (Caravan Project) by Tom Skipp

More infos on Urban Research at www.richfilm.de/DL2011

A preview, links and more stills at richfilm.tumblr.com

Tues 15th 8pm

Imaginary Spaces – Virtual Vision

The Oyster Effect by Valentina Ferrantes

Anders Weberg SE Elsewhereness: Utrecht 4min 7s 2010

Anders Weberg SE Elsewhereness: Cape Town 2min 7s 2009

André Chi Sing Yuen DE The Work 3min 35s 2010

Andrew de Freitas NZ/CN L’Espace Quotidien 10min 46s 2010

Henry Gwiazda US something/the/you 4min 58s 2009

Julie Meyer FR Eclipse 1min 20s 2009

Marina Chernikova NL Metro V 2min 30s 2009

Morehshin Allahyari IR Over There Is Over Here 5min 43s 2010

Sarah Breen Lovett AU Expanded Architecture 04: Window Wound 1min 20sec 2010

Susanne Wiegner DE Just Midnight 3min 37s 2010

Tina Willgren SE The Polymoids 2min 51s 2010

Valentina Ferrandes IT The Oyster Effect 11min 52s 2010

Vera Frenkel CN Once Near Water: Notes from the Scaffolding Archive 15min 26s 2008

Yoko Hata JP Out of the Sky – Back into the Sky 9min 4s 2010

curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr

Notes from the Scaffolding Archives by Vera Frenkel

Once Near Water: Notes from the Scaffolding Archive by Vera Frenkel

More infos on Urban Research at www.richfilm.de/DL2011

A preview, links and more stills at richfilm.tumblr.com

Directors Lounge Screening at Z-Bar
Saturday, 08 Jan 2011
21:00
Relations and Abstractions
Films by
Max Hattler

Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Max Hattler surprises his audience with the gripping force of his abstracted images, combined with sounds he often composes for his own films. The German media artist and animator lives in London and has made a real leap into the media art and festival scene since he graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2005. A programme of his films was already presented at Directors Lounge 2010, and we are happy to present his new programme this month, prior to our festival in February.

In Germany, animation is not being considered as a proper art field, and similar to graphic arts it is often seen as “angewandte Kunst” i.e. craftsmanship or applied arts, mostly feeding the film industry. The field of animation can be quite broad, from animations from pencil drawings, paper-cut-outs, stop-motion, 3D animation, Flash animation and live generated computer graphics. Max Hattler seems to embrace them all, and his work could be seen as happy eclecticism, as post-modern art practice. In Aanaatt (2008) he is using stop-motion animation, Drift (2007) is a combination of close-up photography of skin combined with compositing and Flash animation, Heaven and Hell (2010) are computer generated graphic animation loops, Everything Turns (2004) has been drawn directly into the computer, and Ladyscraper: Cheese Burgers (2011) looks like it was made with live VJ tools.

Looking closer into Max’s work, however, we realize that his art is in no way about eclecticism or appropriation. The artist does make his mark with genuine image composition, and even if his use of different media tools is astonishingly varied, there is something common in most of his films, a kind of surplus, or plenitude that can be almost overwhelming. Animation, this tedious and time-consuming technique (also true in the digital age) usually leads to reduction (unless it is made by big teams and studios such as Pixar) often resulting in a kind of artistic beauty of scarcity. Not with Max Hattler, though! Even if animation techniques lead him to quite abstracted forms, they are not abstract. And the reduced, abstracted forms become symbols again, which often multiply, break apart in smaller image units, still animated, and again accumulate, congregate to larger units, to super-structures. Amazingly, this often happens with a chuckle, a political twist or black humour.

We are very much looking forward to this film night with Max Hattler, who will be available for Q&A after the show.

(curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr)

Artist Link:
http://www.maxhattler.com/
http://www.facebook.com/maxhattler.artistpage

More infos:
http://richfilm.de

Z-Bar
http://www.z-bar.de

Directors Lounge Screening in der Z-Bar
Donnerstag, 25.11.2010
21:00
Discreet Structures
Films by
Toby Cornish und Johannes Braun/ jutojo Berlin

Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Discreet Structures, the title of the program with Toby Cornish and Johannes Braun, refers to the compositional qualities of their films. It also applies to the linking to local architecture or urban places, and to the ways the artists work with musical scores. Both artists’ work mainly originates in Super-8 or 16mm footage, which they shoot and then process digitally. And most films are product of collaborations with musicians.

Two visits to Sarajevo in 2003 and 2004 gave Toby the opportunity to make a structural film in this historically and politically charged place: Sarajevo Vertical. The bridge, where arch-duke Franz Ferdinand was murdered, which gave way to the declaration of war in 1914, the name Tito on a bridge, and the white graves of killed Muslims from the most recent war, all appear in the film but only as a backdrop, or as the ground on which the visitor stands. If “Sarajevo Vertical” has or needs a symbolical/political reading is up to the viewer. First of all it is the rule of composition of filmmaker Cornish to align every image to a vertical line while shooting and then edit the film on principles of repetition, rhythm, acceleration and size of the vertical line.

Toby Cornish is interested in metric structures, in interferences of loops with different lengths, which due to their complexity might lead to a chance operation, similar to musical structures of John Cage or Steve Reich, and which in the end where the result may surprise the artist as much as the audience. With “Rückbau”, a film about the destruction of the East German parliament building, he takes this strategy further. With the help of digital programming, the film composes itself and anew on each presentation.

Johannes Braun, on the other hand is less interested in chance operations but in the totality of visual-acoustic composition. His film Teufelsberg also shows his background as trained architect. The images unfold his explorations of building structures while he tries to capture traces “of hope and disillusion, of making and destroying, still to be sensed” in the rubble and the left-over walls. They also comment on already past (and forgotten) plans for future developments, including architecture drawings and a former model apartment of the already scattered utopia for a commercial hot-spot on Teufelsberg. The visually dense composition thus not only shows the beauty of the bygone structures but also contains an edge of irony.

With “Gaz”, a collective product, the filmmakers again show their strength of working with compositional structures. Gaz was composed to a graphical score, which the filmmakers and the 2 musicians worked on independently of one another. The film celebrates the early industrial designs around gasometers and gas-lights, still to be found in Berlin’s city center.

http://www.jutojo.de/home/

http://www.directorslounge.net
http://richfilm.de

More infos and film stills:
http://richfilm.de/filmUpload/1-framesJutojo.html

Urban Research/ Directors Lounge at
KING KONG Contemporary Art Project,
Ehrenhof des Mannheimer Barockschlosses

Sound Pattern #1 Violence in the City
12-29 November 2010

Opening reception 12 November 19:30 
Mannheim Barock Castle

Three guest curators, Klaus W. Eisenlohr (Berlin), Hans W. Koch (Köln) und Thomas Lühr Frankfurt/M.) present video and sound works.

Barock Castle Catacombes: Tom Skipp’s 3-channel work Stormwater, which explores Europe’s biggest stormwater reservoir before the flood

Container 1: Urban Research Screening and Installation "urban interference and the city’s symbols"

The success of modern cities is connected with relative security and trust in the social contract between citizens. As Jan Philippe Reemtsma states: “If I happen to drop into a violent situation, I will neither be made responsible for not being armed, nor for having failed to defend myself.” (memory-quoted). Although this unwritten contract is part of the production of modernity, urban myths and symbols often tell about violent situations. Therefore, films about urban symbols often deal with the uncanny. They thus touch the precarious balance between the violence of law enforcement and undisclosed threats of decay.  On the other hand, with urban interventions, artists try to play a more active role in society . Some artists see themselves as “political activist” and try to change politics and society; others just try to reach a different, more divers audience; or, they like to reach out for a seemingly impossible dream. All of them, however, share visions and ideas about urban life. And those inspirations may be infectious!

Videos: 

• Seven After Eleven, 2008 -*- Christina McPhee US  • Play Ground, 2009 -*- Rinat Edelstein IL  • Descend, 2009 -*- Pablo Useros ES  • Fragments of the Los Angeles River, 2009 -*- Richard O’Sullivan UK  • Elsewhereness: Yokohama, 2008 -*- Anders Weberg + Robert Willim SW  • Sintia, -*- Jose Matiella +Ivan Meza MX  • Buda, 2009 -*- Beatriz + Carlos Matiella MX  • Easy Rider, 2006 -*- Pilvi Takala FI  • Jalkeilla Taas (Up And About Again), 2009 -*- Maarit Suomi-Väänänen FI  • Amusement Park, 2001 -*- Pilvi Takala FI  • Drive, 2008 -*- Elham Rokni IL  • Simulacro, 2005 -*- Hector Falcon MX  • Moel Yad, 2009 -*- Hadas Tapouchi IL  • Night Meter, 2000-*-Yaron Lapid UK  • Interception 2007-2009 -*- Roch Forowicz PL  • Stormwater / Estanque de tormentas-*- Tom Skipp ES curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr (Directors’ Lounge Berlin)

Links:

KIng Kong
http://www.kingkong-contemporary.de/?p=539
Klaus W. Eisenlohr
http://www.richfilm.de/DL2010/framesIndex.html

Ladybugs do not Dream
Directors Lounge Screening
with
Maru Ituarte and Ute Ströer

Thursday, 28 October 2010
21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstr. 2
D-10115 Berlin-Mitte
U-Rosenthaler Platz

Ladybugs do not Dream
– Marienkäfer träumen nicht –

Two female filmmakers present their work at Z-Bar, the upcoming Directors Lounge screening. Both show a clear female point-of-view onto their subject without calling themselves feminists. Maru Ituarte, born in Monterrey, Mexico, has recorded and collected images of her surrounding with a critical view onto the violent, destructive and male-oriented aspects of a society that separates the male and female spheres at large. A found box of Hi-8 tapes, meant to be recorded over, became the source for a work called „Mexican Goulash“, which has a stunning similarity to a compilations of those self-obsessed clips to be found on Youtube in our days. It becomes the portrait of a certain part of the middle class.

Ute Ströer’s interest in film is based on her love for fairy tales and horror movies. The filmmaker meticulously works on the look of her images, strives for perfection in color and composition, and with her film characters she tries to achieve the largest band-with of expression and possible interpretation. The narrator we might have believed to hear exists only in the viewer’s head, the story we read only exists in fragments of symbols, a “Glasperlenspiel” of meanings.

Thus, as much as the aesthetic of the two artists may differ, they have much in common. Both invite, even seduce the viewer to follow onto a subjective journey of female perspective, when half-way on seemingly secure roads the viewer realizes, it’s their own imagination that has been triggered, their own story they have lived through, and actually, there is no such simple interpretation.

The artists will be present and available for Q&A.
(Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr)

video program
curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr

http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/index.html
http://directorslounge.net

Artists Links:
http://maru-ituarte.com
http://www.utestroer.de

Programme:

• Daumenlutscherin     Ute Ströer    12:17
• Schlafende Füchsin    Ute Ströer     15:07
• La Metafisica Del Yoyo    Maru Ituarte    2:30
• Reproduktion    Maru Ituarte     9:13
• Hotel Rex    Maru Ituarte    3:06
• Mexican Goulash    Maru Ituarte    9:55
• Noa Noa Narko Tour    Maru Ituarte    5:01
• Fleisch    Maru Ituarte     6:30
• Phreak Show    Maru Ituarte    10:23
• Matrijoschka    Ute Ströer     7:33

Neue Bewirtschaftung, Magistrale 2010.
(New Management)
Screening in public pubs and at gallery Suomesta on Potsdamer Str.:
October 8 starting at 6pm
October 9 starting at 2pm
October 10 discussion at 2pm

Organized by gallery Suomesta and Neues Museum, this event is including many Directors Lounge artists and associates. The artists and their films will occupy screens in public pubs usually set up for watching soccer games along Potsdamer Str, Berlin

Participating artists:
Thorsten Fleisch, Veli Granö, Jari Haanperä, Marikki Hakola, Aline Helmcke, Pekka Kantonen, Cinema Mobile, Horace Ové, Antti Pussinen, Seppo Renvall, Pekka Sassi, Ira Schneider, PINK TWINS, Roi Vaara and Klaus W. Eisenlohr with a selection of his Urban Research programme.
On Oct. 10 there will be a discussion panel on the question of “places for short independent film today?”
Program and more detailed infos on http://magistrale2010.wordpress.com/

Directors Lounge presents:

The Destructive Power of Happiness
Video and Film Works by
RICCARDO IACONO
Thursday, 23 September 2010
21:00

Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Riccardo Iacono, London-based artist and filmmaker, presents a selection of films and video from three different bodies of work: abstract videos, hand-painted films and performance tapes (produced between 1993-2007).

“I like the destructive power of fire”, a friend stated to Riccardo. It became the source for the title of the show in Berlin. Riccardo’s fire might be his anarchistic disposition to destroy static concepts. However, he does not avoid the pains, the exhaustive efforts it takes to make art from “happiness”.

In his process of working with film, the painted film became the silent musical score for the making, the re-photographing of the film. By means of an optical printer, he developed a way to have light reflected from the 3-dimensional surface of the paint, while at the same time still illuminating it from the backside. Although such animation techniques usually are tedious work, Riccardo already tried to achieve some immediacy while printing film to film. This urge for directness, and a need for improvisation and contact with people have possibly let to his more recent body of work: “Shooqui”. The whole series of videos, which involves throwing peas or clothes, is the opposite of camera-less film. The artist holds the camera, aiming and tracking the prospective trajectory of the object being thrown by his other hand. The body connection between holding and throwing leads to a compulsive and circular movement of the camera when throwing larger objects. “It is almost like the recoil action of a gun upon firing.”
(Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr)

Programme
From Memory 1994-2003 16mm, colour silent 15.00
Open 1994/2003 16mm optical sound 2.30
Fuzzy Lover 2003 16mm B/W silent 2.10
Pea Video 2006 DV colour Stereo 2.00
More Light 2004 DV colour Stereo 4.55
Recess 2007 DV colour stereo 1:00
P-Sample 1 2006 DV colour Stereo 2:45
Play 2001 DV colour stereo 3:50
The Electric Garden 2004 DV colour Stereo 5.55
Radiator 1994 DV colour stereo 4:15
Roadside Mix 2006 DV Colour stereo 1:31
Cold Tape 2000 DV colour stereo 1.11
Kinky 2006 DV Colour stereo 1:45
Walk 2001 DV Colour stereo 3:30
A Lecture In Throwing A Pea 2006 DV colour Stereo 1.00
Universe Energies Sustain Us 2002 DV colour Stereo 14.00
Elephant 2007 DV colour Stereo 7:30

Artist-Links:
http://www.riccardoiacono.co.uk
http://www.axisweb.org/openfrequency/riccardoiacono

Detailed program info:
http://www.richfilm.de/filmUpload/1-framesRiccIacono.html
http://www.riccardoiacono.co.uk/exhibitions/DL_berlin230910.html

http://www.z-bar.de