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. The fundamental instability of (medial)seeing and hearing is attributed on the one hand to the subjectivity of the humansenses, while on the other hand the limits of scientificrecording are reflected upon: no matter what technical means are used to createour image of nature and landscape never moves outsidethe imagination and culturally shaped ideas. Against this
thematic background, the films and videos in

In Face of Nature 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 survey 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 over a period of 50 days on dated, very sensitive
infrared footage in
single-frame mode. In thecenter of constant shots: a tree in a meadow inVermont. Kren left some unexposed between the exposed frames;he cranked the film back again and again and gradually exposedthe previously skipped areas, each time under different light andweather conditions. The result was a fascinating storm of images in
which different times and states of nature intertwine
and seem to dissolve.

Printer Light Play
Arthur & Corinne Cantrill, AUS 1978, 16mm, 6′

A young man holds a color scale, behind him a framed landscape picture on
the white wall. The experimental arrangement, which alludes to thephotographic depiction of works of art, serves as an exercise in visual perception: the filtering of the film imageis changed according to the numericalinformation of a female voice, giving the scene a sometimes more, sometimes less strongcolor cast. After a short time, it seems almost impossible
to assess which of the many color scales of the faithful
image actually corresponds to reality.

Lantouy
Isabell Spengler & Daniel Adams, D 2006, Video, 7′

Images like soap bubbles: ephemeral, transparent and
shimmering with color at the same time. The footage for Isabell Spengler and
Daniel Adam’s video was shot in the legendary Lantouy in
southern France. “While we were still busy adjusting the fifty
layers of our misty petticoats and sorting the
filigree strings of our modest musical apparatuses,
we were clumsily crawling through the rough and sugar-coated
mountain tunnels on our 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, 11.
August 2005).

Sky Light
Chris Welsby, UK 1988, 16mm, 26′

Sky Light is Chris Welsby’s haunting response to the
reactor catastrophe in Chernobyl in 1986. The elegiac imagesof a stream are replaced by jagged rocks in a snow-coveredlandscape and cloud formations against a blue sky. As
the film’s duration increases, the montage and soundtrack condense into
an alarming mood, permeated time and again by 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 supplemented by documentary footage
of the barren landscape and the adverse weather conditions.
Ground Truth explores the question of what truths are hidden behind the
empirical interpretation of climate change and to what extent
the collected data guarantee that the complex system of processes
can really be understood.

bellevue
Michaela Schwentner, A 2007, Video, 9′

“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 whispering, which Schwentner obtained from the
direct conversion of the image files into sound files, the vision clarifies and
obscures itself in a continuous process. As if the mountain, seen a million times
and reproduced photographically, did not want to simply reveal its identity so
easily; indeed, as if the seemingly banal
weather panorama shot held a kind of key to the disappearance of the
supposedly most unchangeable, natural things.” (Christian
Höller)