In un'intervista incrociata, i due artisti raccontano a domusweb il loro lavoro e la loro collaborazione.
Is your work on urban and suburban architecture and space due to your education and studies?
S.N. As for my part, I am still active as a biologist. However, on the one hand some approaches might be similar to architecture, you can use methods in music/art which are similar to scientific methods and on the other hand architecture and biology have both to deal with structures.
L.S. Yes. I have studied architecture at the Technical University of Graz (A), at the University of Edinburgh (GB) and at the Federico II in Napels (I). I graduated in 1999 and now I am teaching at the Institute of Space and Design at the University of Arts in Linz.
How the projects I.E. and Domino were born?
S.N. The background for both works - as far as I can say as a musician - is how you can approach something like a landscape (I.E.) or buildings (Domino) with a camera. It is about topography. This sounds easy at the beginning, but it is more difficult, if you imagine that the human visual perception is different from a picture captured by a camera, which is usually only a segment. In fact, both systems have their own restrictions and filters. Lotte Schreiber tries to describe this by very strict camera angles and means like zoom and totals. Also both films have a very stringent proportion, when it comes to different scenes and the editing of them.
L.S. In general I always describe my filmwork as "cartographic portrayals in film form", trying to develop instruments/parameters for translating space into moving images. After Quadro (2002) I wanted to approach the physical space through a specific landscape. I knew the landscape of the Isole Eolie only through literature and films - especially through Roberto Rosselini's "Stromboli. Terra di Dío" and Antonioni's "L´avventura". I.E. is referring to both films.
The film Domino is the attempt to juxtapose and confront architectural space (in the case of Domino I would rather talk about structures) with landscape. I used these unfinished houses, these anonymous concrete-frameworks, which are spred all over the Mediteranean landscape in Greece, as reference systems to perceive and record the landscape.
Why do you use both Super 8 and digital video?
S.N. I think Lotte Schreiber uses them both because they represent different perspectives of the same. Both media react very different and also evoke different associations. Super 8 probably gives you the cinematic and also referential - perhaps nostalgic - view of an object.....digital video deals more with documentary and pretends to be "real". However, I think it is interesting how the same building or landscape can have such a different appearence in the film, when you use different media.
L.S. As Stefan already said I use them both because they represent different perspectives of the same. The static and strictly framed Super 8 recordings construct a specific aesthetics. The turbulent video recordings, on the contrary, play with an apparent directness, with a subjective gaze and the physicality of the images.
What is the role played by music intervention in your videos?
S.N. In all cases the film was edited by Lotte first and then she asked me to do the soundtrack. In the version, which have been shown on film festivals, I had a relatively minimal concept for the music. Parts of it are processed field recordings done on location and parts of it are more or less sound design. Only a few passages have music in a strict sense. I tried to keep the sound "open", simply because I felt that it makes no sense to push the films too hard into one or the other direction. In these cases it made more sense to be very careful and I tried not to interprete the film too much. As there is not spoken text in the videos, it can be easily misunderstood as a music video, if you do too much conventional music for it. For the live-version in Bologna, it might be slightly more music, because the general context is a different one - it is not a screening in a cinema, but an audio-visual festival.
L.S. Just take Stefan answers.
From above: color video still from I.E. (8’, 2004) by Lotte Schreiber; b/w video still from Domino (12’, 2005) by Lotte Schreiber
Netmage 09
Palazzo Re Enzo - Piazza Nettuno, Bologna
Saturday 24 January 10pm
Stefan Németh plays Domino and I.E. by Lotte Schreiber (A) live-media forLive Media Floor
