Video still from Andrea Polli: Ground Truth, USA 2008
This program of historical and contemporary short films examines the relativity of the perception of nature and landscape. On the one hand, the fundamental instability of (medial) seeing and hearing is attributed to the subjectivity of the human senses; on the other, the limits of scientific recording are reflected upon: no matter what technical means are used, our image of nature and landscape is never beyond our imagination and culturally influenced ideas. Against this thematic background, the films and videos in In Face of Nature oscillate between strictly structural procedures, surreal descriptions of places and the documentary-experimental examination of a world threatened by nuclear disasters and climate change.
The films in detail:
I. E. [site 01 – isole eolie]
Lotte Schreiber, A 2004, Video, 8′ “Stromboli appears briefly, as if lifted out of the darkness by a flash of lightning, into which it disappears again. Then we approach the Aeolian Islands, in whose cinematic image movement and stillness, the materiality of Super 8 and video collide. In the space created by this measurement with the camera, the landscape is examined as a subjective sensual experience, but also as an aesthetic object of representation.” (Barbara Pichler)
7/78 Tree again
Kurt Kren, A 1978, 16mm, 4′
Kurt Kren’s first film in the USA, shot in single frame on dated, very sensitive infrared material over a period of 50 days. In the center of constant shots: a tree in a meadow in Vermont. Between the exposed frames, Kren left some unexposed; he cranked the film back again and again and gradually exposed the previously skipped areas, each time under different light and weather conditions. The result was a fascinating storm of images in which different times and states of nature intermingle and seem to dissolve.
Printer Light Play
Arthur & Corinne Cantrill, AUS 1978, 16mm, 6′
A young man holds a color scale, behind him on the white wall a framed landscape picture. The experimental set-up, which alludes to the photographic depiction of works of art, serves as an exercise in visual perception: the filtering of the film image is changed according to the numerical information of a female voice, giving the scene a color cast that is sometimes more, sometimes less strong. After a short time, it seems almost impossible to assess which of the many color scales actually corresponds to the faithful representation of reality.
Lantouy
Isabell Spengler & Daniel Adams, D 2006, Video, 7′
Images like soap bubbles: ephemeral, transparent and at the same time colorful and iridescent. The footage for Isabell Spengler and Daniel Adams’ video was shot in the legendary town of Lantouy in the south of France. “While we were still busy adjusting the fifty layers of our nebulous petticoats and sorting the delicate strings of our modest musical apparatuses, we crawled awkwardly through the rough and sugar-coated mountain tunnels on the way to Lantouy, when suddenly fairy dust pampered our eyes and ears to such an extent that we were beamed directly into the center of our unknown destination.” (Lantouy, August 11, 2005).
Sky Light
Chris Welsby, UK 1988, 16mm, 26′
Film still from Chris Welsby: Sky Light, UK 1988
Sky Light is Chris Welsby’s haunting response to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. The elegiac images of a stream are replaced by jagged rocks in a snow-covered landscape and cloud formations against a blue sky. As the film progresses, the montage and soundtrack intensify to create an alarming mood, repeatedly interspersed with the crackling of a violin counter.
Ground Truth
Andrea Polli, USA 2008, Video, 8′
Andrea Polli accompanies atmospheric researchers, meteorologists and weather observers in their work at the South Pole. Short statements and interview passages are complemented by documentary footage of the barren landscape and the adverse weather conditions. Ground Truth explores the question of what truths lie behind the empirical interpretation of climate change and to what extent the data collected guarantees a real understanding of the complex system of processes.
bellevue
Michaela Schwentner, A 2007, Video, 9′
Video still from Michaela Schwentner: bellevue, A 2007
“Snow, fog, clouds – and in the middle a barely recognizable mountain massif. Or rather: white noise, from which contours gradually emerge and disappear again, like will-o’-the-wisps in a digital picture fog. […] The source material for Michaela Schwentner’s bellevue is webcam footage of the Großglockner collected over months. Accompanied by an ambient-like whisper, which Schwentner obtained from the direct conversion of the image files into sound files, the vision clarifies and obscures itself in one go. As if the mountain, seen millions of times and reproduced photographically, does not want to reveal its identity so easily; indeed, as if the seemingly banal weather panorama shot holds a kind of key to the disappearance of the supposedly most unchangeable, natural things.” (Christian Höller)