Afternoon Hearsay

Philipp Fleischmann develops special cameras designed to formulate specific relations between the material of the footage (16 or 35 mm film) and the object of the recording. For instance, in his 2013 project “Main Hall,” he deconstructs the main exhibition hall of the Viennese Secession, filming the exhibition architecture with 19 individual cameras and thus creating images that show the view of the exhibition space onto itself. Fleischmann’s recent work, “Untitled (Generali Foundation Vienna)" identifies the film camera as a spacial object-form by itself. Correlating with the history of artistic interventions on site, the object is placed in the former exhibition space of the Generali Foundation at Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15, Vienna, and provided with a cinematographic view.

The decision to move to Holland doesn't sound like a wise idea. Why move to a country that could be flooded at any moment? For the last 25 years, the political climate has shifted. The public debate on migration has become harsher, more heated, and polarized. What would have been considered right-wing xenophobia back then, is now considered mainstream. Populists simplify complex realities into good and evil, victims and perpetrators: ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Their rhetoric often consists of dehumanizing words and metaphors. One of these is ‘water’. In reality, water is not an immediate threat to the average Dutch person; but it is a huge threat to the thousands trying to reach the Netherlands. People trying to survive the Mediterranean Sea in rubber boats. Trying to survive winter on the Aegean coast in primitive tents. To them, water really is deadly.

An exploration of how the U.S. military employs video game technology to train troops for war. In A Sun With No Shadow, Farocki calls attention to the subtle differences between the simulations for combat training and PTSD. With the former, the sun can be programmed to cast shadows in the virtual combat zones, while the latter, less expensive technology does not offer this feature.

An exploration of how the U.S. military employs video game technology to train troops for war. Filmed at the United States Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Watson is Down pairs footage of soldiers at computers engaging in combat-simulation training with scenes from the video games.

An exploration of how the U.S. military employs video game technology to train troops for war. Three Dead depicts a military exercise within a mock Iraqi town built on the outskirts of Twentynine Palms, California, blurring the line between computer simulation and reality.

An exploration of how the U.S. military employs video game technology to train troops for war. In Immersion, Farocki presents footage of a role-playing exercise in which military psychologists demonstrate how to use the PTSD program on their colleagues, who describe traumatic wartime experiences. On a second channel, their descriptions play out as virtual renderings.

Portrait of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist whose specialty is ephemeral sculptures made from elements of nature.

REkOGNIZE is a three-channel video installation and a meditation on photography, memory, and movement. Artist and Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Bradford Young (Selma, Arrival) finds inspiration in Pittsburgh’s Hill District neighborhood, a site of the early 20th-century Great Migration. During this time, millions of African Americans moved from the rural southern United States to cities in the north and west. The Hill District saw a flourishing of culture during these years and was a site of artistic development for luminaries such as August Wilson, Charles “Teenie” Harris, Errol Garner, and many others. REkOGNIZE takes its visual cues from the Pittsburgh landscape, especially the city’s tunnels, which serve not only as literal entry points into the city, but also as metaphors for this movement of people and culture.

They gather here every day. They come from far and without purpose. They don't know each other and they won't come to know each other. They carry their gadgets to optimize the experience. They engage with the world through a small frame. They believe that this moment will remain unforgotten.

CREMASTER 3 is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect...

Falling Frames is the first fragment of a series in which Langkamp explores the framing and visualization of three-dimensional perspective through the two-dimensional medium of video, both technically as well as conceptually. To record the work, a special device was built that's attached to a tall industrial crane, which contains a stack of wooden picture frames that can be released from a height of ten to fifteen meters. The camera is placed right in the center of the action and captures the frames' movement while they fall down. The slow motion recording of 240 still frames per second allows us to experience every millimeter of movement to the very detail. While the frames get smaller and smaller in perspective as they move further away from our view, they are immediately followed by the next frame and the next one, until they've all reached the floor and found a place to rest.

Wang’s work investigates the ways in which sound and listening can play pivotal roles in shaping social space. For Music While We Work, Wang assembled a group of retired workers from a Taiwanese sugar refinery in the small industrial town of her childhood. She and her collaborator, the political activist and composer Chen Bo-Wei (Taiwanese, born 1971), led a series of recording workshops for the retirees and their spouses. They then returned to the factory, where Wang asked them to “paint a world composed by their listening.”

Artefacts from the golden times of small gauge amateur film take centre stage: Ready-made film transitions from the 1970’s and 80’s, short, colourful patterns and animations for the ambitious hobby film maker to be intercut into their home movies. This project brings these forgotten pieces of film culture back to life and celebrates their opulent aesthetics in a stereoscopic film projection. It pumps, jumps, slides, and distorts the reference points of our languid brains. A trip!

Brazilian short film, directed by Julia Murat.

This experimental "film" consists of an empty room with a bare lightbulb, and windows covered with a translucent material, for a duration of 24 hours. It is not necessary for visitors to stay for the entire duration - they can come and go as they please. Created by Anthony McCall, it is based on the architectural framing of time and light. It came at the end of a series of works in which McCall was stripping back cinema to its absolute minimum - light, time, and human experience/perception.

Video installation by UMMMI.

"Ummmi’s Lonely Girl features a young Shibuya girl, sometimes she messes things up, sometimes she is sad or depressed but she lives her life for the fun moments. In these moments she can forget everything which has come before her in life. She needs these moments to keep her going. In constructing this work I tried to embracing the feeling of the fluctuating heart, bouncing between happiness and sadness. Playing with the stereotypes of youth culture, such as loneliness, and a life of excess, I carried this drunk girl from my parents apartment on edge of Shibuya, to Shibuya Station to wait for the first train home. This is a performance archive video." -UMMMI.

Video installation by UMMMI.

"This installation piece explores the forewarning signs which occur before a defining event taking place. It develops through a mixture of documentary and scripted footages of my father, with texts related to my memory of him mixed into it. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster of 2011, I have felt that the people of Japan are now forced to live more consciously of the forewarning signs before an incident. This feels as if it’s universally bearing over general social issues as well as miniscule personal level incidents. I decided to feature my own father in this video piece filmed in the style of a fictional documentation. This is all bout Drinking, and weakness." -UMMMI.

"This experimental melodrama follows Hikari, and her boyfriend Taro’s visit to his family home. While there Hikari forms an unexpected relationship with Taro’s auntie, Kyoto. As their relationship develops it becomes clear that Kyoko is struggling to control her mental state and the issues that ensue. Taro discovers that Hikari has had a brief affair with a friend of Kyoko’s and cannot control his emotions. This film is about the destruction of old love, and the cultivation of new love becoming tainted by history repeating itself." -UMMMI.