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deal with the
balance so
that we become familiar with the art of
braking and accelerating hence the complex condition
between highest
speed and crash.
Film and driving are closely connected as shown by film artists from 80 years ago already. And it is no surprise that Dziga Vertov, who wanted to develop possiblities in film, spoke out vehemently against sentimentality and theatrical aspects in film. He wanted a film that separates itself from anything literary. In his film "Tschelowjek s kinoapparatom" (The man with the camera), which accompanies with the camera through one day he tried out all ways of camera drives in 1929 and installed the camera onto engines and motor bikes as well erecting it on a tripod on cars (the film can be watched at http://www.mediamanual.at/mediamanual/ workshop/dziga_vertov/index.php Other examples are "Berlin - Symphonie einer Grosstadt" [Berlin - Symphony Of a Big City] by Walter Ruttmann and "The Cameraman" by Buster Keaton, 1928) The car as camera Here the genre of the road-movies is already indicated. The car as place of the camera when shooting is the challenge here for filmmakers and artists. There the car itself can be seen as a camera like Fritz Rahmann and Florian Kleinefenn, who prepare it 1987 as camera obscura. For "Camerafahrten mit Automobil" (camera drives with car) they used a Volkswagen Golf as exhibition space and drove it 'according to the projected picture[...] which enters from one side only' - so they followed the projection of the surroundings into the inside of the car - with passengers during the documenta 8 (cataloge, vol. 2, page 298) in Kassel's Karlsaue (name of a street in Kassel). The dealing with a mirror picture which in addition was visible at the back of the car asked for extremely slow driving. It is about braking when Kimberly Horton for example sees relation between film and stills. Besides that artists as specialists for seeing tend to be obstructionists making them to notorious brakers anyways, who are inquisitive about and argue against everything, like critical souls from other areas as well. Here it is about breaking of conventions. This does not have to be a vicious act because the stop (break) of a movement can evolve from a dreamy attitude first of all, as shown in the video without title filmed by Horton through a side |
window of the
car. By
being filmed a
water drop stuck to the side window, put into wiggling
by the wind,
becomes an illusion in which the forward movement is
shifted to a
chaotic-poetical movement on the spot whilst outside
the surroundings
pass by.
Movement as illusion An attentive eye can see the betrayal on the eye when a film with 24 pictures per second runs on the screen in the cinema. It flickers, beause the human brain can see only from 48+ pictures per second per film without interruption. To save on film material though a mechanical funktion of the projection apparatus lets each picture flash twice. Only rarely the motives jump and blurr during passing, for example during a camera drive. Then only braking of the camera drive and turns helps to limit this flaw of the cinema. In this exhibition 'Flee or Break' both artists show very own artistic solutions on the intersection of filming and taking photographs. Sabine Hšpfner who was invited by Kimberly Horton as guest limited the frames extremely in her series "Wasserfest" (celebration of water) (2003). 3-5 exposures are enough for her and these are projected one over the other and then shown in a repetitive circle over and over again, not only to create the illusion of movement but to define it anew. The single pictures she uses let any outlines of the passing cars disappear. Their appearance in the speed (of the projection) is converted completely to a range in brightness and color on the film. Projected in the repetitive circle they do no longer appear as movements on the screen but are interpreted in the brain as an accelerating and decelerating movement. The scene, a crash barrier in front of a green area near the sea, enhances the suggestion which lets the range in brightness and color appear like the range in light of waves moving towards the beach in a beat. A whole video on a roll of slides When Hšpfner dissolved individual exposures film-like so does Kimberly Horten go the opposite path from video to photographie with the rolls of slides that are rolled in full length around hallogen light-sticks. She filmed from inside the overground subway several rides passing houses, gardens, places and parks and then photographed the screen. She does not take single exposures here but instead |
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