Cinema like never before
20 January through 23 April 2006
With works by Hartmut Bitomsky, Gustav Deutsch, Isabell Heimerdinger, Astrid Küver, Constanze Ruhm,
Krassimir Terziev, Nadim Vardag, Klaus Wyborny, Stephen Zepke as well as Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki.
curated by Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki
Generali Foundation
Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15
1040 Vienna, Austria foundation.generali.at
Generali Foundation Collection online!
Film pictures in exhibition spaces have longest been taken for granted. Reason enough to more closely examine the origin of these pictures. What is seen in cinema and in which way? How does the medium of film function and what rules does it follow? The author and filmmaker Harun Farocki and the film academic and artist Antje Ehmann have been invited by the Generali Foundation to use the exhibition space for cinema and film analysis.
Cinema like never before is to be perceived as a cinematographic laboratory. Film is brought into the exhibition space without simulating a situation of cinema. Similar to an editing room, takes are weighed and evaluated, cutting frequencies established, and principles of structure and composition analyzed. Archetypes and recurring patterns in film history are addressed and cinemas technological determinants and conditions of perception are investigated. The exhibition brings together analytical and artistic practices that further contemplate cinema in the art space and contribute to a different understanding of film.
As opposed to other film exhibitions, it is not the predominant issue here to cele-brate the myth of cinema.
Cinema like never before is a film exhibition that does not show complete films, but elucidates film language by means of photographic series, slide se-quences, and sequential montages. With photographs, stills and moving images, the exhibition intends to provide a chance to study films as it is otherwise done in cutting rooms and seminars, but always with a great deal of explanation. In contrast, the idea here is to detach analyses of images from a discursive framework, instead allowing them to unfold by virtue of conceptual sequences of images.
Numerous contributions of the artists, filmmakers and authors were specially developed for the exhibition. Among them an installation by Hartmut Bitomsky, one of Germanys most prominent documentary filmmakers, which presents death as an axiom of cinema.
Accompanying Publication
Edited by Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki, published by Sabine Breitwieser for
Generali Foundation, Vienna. Verlag Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, German/English.
Artistic and Managing Director: Sabine Breitwieser
Press Office: Carmen Buchacher 43 1 504 98 80-24 found.presse@generali.at
