CODE UNKNOWN [Re_Sync] Notes on a film excerpt

Installation [Wallprints, Injketprints, Videoprojection] for Weserburg, Museum für Moderne Kusnt, Bremen

The installation was first conceived for Weserburg, Museum für moderne Kunst Bremen. It analyses a key scene in Michael Haneke‘s film CODE INCONNUE (2000), in which another film is dubbed by the actors Juliette Binoche and Thierry Neuvic. Mario Pfeifer re-transfers this scene into an adapted script, giving the moving images a quasi-a-priori source text. This German version script–with an additional fictional establishing shot and end sequence referring to Haneke’s usual strategies of opening and ending a film–is mounted full frame on the exhibition walls in a white cube setting. Within these wall texts ten posters display quotations by Michael Haneke–questions that he had drafted and published before the production of the film. In the following room, Haneke‘s film excerpts in the original French version with German subtitles are screened in a continuously loop. While the scene plays forward in normal speed first, it is later re-winded with high speed to start again. The image quality is rather poor indicating the image appropriation and carries a decoding software symbol referring to user practices of bootlegging films through freeware applications.

Exhibition Design by Devin Dailey
Typography by Melanie Glass
Installation Documentation by Jens Weyers
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2010 Germany

CODE UNKNOWN [Re_Sync] Notes on a film excerpt

Installation [Wallprints, Injketprints, Videoprojection] for Weserburg, Museum für Moderne Kusnt, Bremen

The installation was first conceived for Weserburg, Museum für moderne Kunst Bremen. It analyses a key scene in Michael Haneke‘s film CODE INCONNUE (2000), in which another film is dubbed by the actors Juliette Binoche and Thierry Neuvic. Mario Pfeifer re-transfers this scene into an adapted script, giving the moving images a quasi-a-priori source text. This German version script–with an additional fictional establishing shot and end sequence referring to Haneke’s usual strategies of opening and ending a film–is mounted full frame on the exhibition walls in a white cube setting. Within these wall texts ten posters display quotations by Michael Haneke–questions that he had drafted and published before the production of the film. In the following room, Haneke‘s film excerpts in the original French version with German subtitles are screened in a continuously loop. While the scene plays forward in normal speed first, it is later re-winded with high speed to start again. The image quality is rather poor indicating the image appropriation and carries a decoding software symbol referring to user practices of bootlegging films through freeware applications.

Exhibition Design by Devin Dailey
Typography by Melanie Glass
Installation Documentation by Jens Weyers
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2010 Germany

CODE UNKNOWN [Re_Sync] Notes on a film excerpt

Installation [Wallprints, Injketprints, Videoprojection] for Weserburg, Museum für Moderne Kusnt, Bremen

The installation was first conceived for Weserburg, Museum für moderne Kunst Bremen. It analyses a key scene in Michael Haneke‘s film CODE INCONNUE (2000), in which another film is dubbed by the actors Juliette Binoche and Thierry Neuvic. Mario Pfeifer re-transfers this scene into an adapted script, giving the moving images a quasi-a-priori source text. This German version script–with an additional fictional establishing shot and end sequence referring to Haneke’s usual strategies of opening and ending a film–is mounted full frame on the exhibition walls in a white cube setting. Within these wall texts ten posters display quotations by Michael Haneke–questions that he had drafted and published before the production of the film. In the following room, Haneke‘s film excerpts in the original French version with German subtitles are screened in a continuously loop. While the scene plays forward in normal speed first, it is later re-winded with high speed to start again. The image quality is rather poor indicating the image appropriation and carries a decoding software symbol referring to user practices of bootlegging films through freeware applications.

Exhibition Design by Devin Dailey
Typography by Melanie Glass
Installation Documentation by Jens Weyers
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2010 Germany

A Formal Film in Nine Episodes, Prologue & Epilogue

35 mm film & HD-multiple-channel-projection for exhibition space, colour, Dolby Sr 5.1, 50 min
Hindi, Tamil with English subtitles

The Film describes a contemporary Asian Metropolis through an observational, anthropological approach of filmmaking. Each scenery in those nine episodes depicts landscape, architecture, interiors or humans from rural communities to factories, medical facilities or ancient and religious sites which all share miraculous beauty, a critical view on the cities development as well as cultural phenomenas and aesthetic explorations. Slowly establishing two characters, the film leaves its documentarian nature and progresses into a narrative, which purely follows two humans, sharing their movements in time and space letting us remember a cinema of love in the Asian context. Shot on 35 mm in only single takes without repeating any action, the production of the film itself tries to be aware of its outsider position looking at a contemporary, vastly booming Third World Country and its cultural history of 5,000 years by simply capturing and re-enacting experienced situations. Trying to avoid a clear genre definition to this film, it is entirely shot on location in the city of Mumbai and its suburbia. Both performers, Gopal and Nandhini, work on regular day jobs and live in Bombay’s suburbia--and have never participated in a film project.

A Formal Film in Nine Episodes, Prologue & Epilogue

35 mm film & HD-multiple-channel-projection for exhibition space, colour, Dolby Sr 5.1, 50 min
Hindi, Tamil with English subtitles

The Film describes a contemporary Asian Metropolis through an observational, anthropological approach of filmmaking. Each scenery in those nine episodes depicts landscape, architecture, interiors or humans from rural communities to factories, medical facilities or ancient and religious sites which all share miraculous beauty, a critical view on the cities development as well as cultural phenomenas and aesthetic explorations. Slowly establishing two characters, the film leaves its documentarian nature and progresses into a narrative, which purely follows two humans, sharing their movements in time and space letting us remember a cinema of love in the Asian context. Shot on 35 mm in only single takes without repeating any action, the production of the film itself tries to be aware of its outsider position looking at a contemporary, vastly booming Third World Country and its cultural history of 5,000 years by simply capturing and re-enacting experienced situations. Trying to avoid a clear genre definition to this film, it is entirely shot on location in the city of Mumbai and its suburbia. Both performers, Gopal and Nandhini, work on regular day jobs and live in Bombay’s suburbia--and have never participated in a film project.

A Formal Film in Nine Episodes, Prologue & Epilogue

35 mm film & HD-multiple-channel-projection for exhibition space, colour, Dolby Sr 5.1, 50 min
Hindi, Tamil with English subtitles

The Film describes a contemporary Asian Metropolis through an observational, anthropological approach of filmmaking. Each scenery in those nine episodes depicts landscape, architecture, interiors or humans from rural communities to factories, medical facilities or ancient and religious sites which all share miraculous beauty, a critical view on the cities development as well as cultural phenomenas and aesthetic explorations. Slowly establishing two characters, the film leaves its documentarian nature and progresses into a narrative, which purely follows two humans, sharing their movements in time and space letting us remember a cinema of love in the Asian context. Shot on 35 mm in only single takes without repeating any action, the production of the film itself tries to be aware of its outsider position looking at a contemporary, vastly booming Third World Country and its cultural history of 5,000 years by simply capturing and re-enacting experienced situations. Trying to avoid a clear genre definition to this film, it is entirely shot on location in the city of Mumbai and its suburbia. Both performers, Gopal and Nandhini, work on regular day jobs and live in Bombay’s suburbia--and have never participated in a film project.

A Formal Film in Nine Episodes, Prologue & Epilogue

35 mm film & HD-multiple-channel-projection for exhibition space, colour, Dolby Sr 5.1, 50 min
Hindi, Tamil with English subtitles

The Film describes a contemporary Asian Metropolis through an observational, anthropological approach of filmmaking. Each scenery in those nine episodes depicts landscape, architecture, interiors or humans from rural communities to factories, medical facilities or ancient and religious sites which all share miraculous beauty, a critical view on the cities development as well as cultural phenomenas and aesthetic explorations. Slowly establishing two characters, the film leaves its documentarian nature and progresses into a narrative, which purely follows two humans, sharing their movements in time and space letting us remember a cinema of love in the Asian context. Shot on 35 mm in only single takes without repeating any action, the production of the film itself tries to be aware of its outsider position looking at a contemporary, vastly booming Third World Country and its cultural history of 5,000 years by simply capturing and re-enacting experienced situations. Trying to avoid a clear genre definition to this film, it is entirely shot on location in the city of Mumbai and its suburbia. Both performers, Gopal and Nandhini, work on regular day jobs and live in Bombay’s suburbia--and have never participated in a film project.

A Formal Film in Nine Episodes, Prologue & Epilogue

35 mm film & HD-multiple-channel-projection for exhibition space, colour, Dolby Sr 5.1, 50 min
Hindi, Tamil with English subtitles

The Film describes a contemporary Asian Metropolis through an observational, anthropological approach of filmmaking. Each scenery in those nine episodes depicts landscape, architecture, interiors or humans from rural communities to factories, medical facilities or ancient and religious sites which all share miraculous beauty, a critical view on the cities development as well as cultural phenomenas and aesthetic explorations. Slowly establishing two characters, the film leaves its documentarian nature and progresses into a narrative, which purely follows two humans, sharing their movements in time and space letting us remember a cinema of love in the Asian context. Shot on 35 mm in only single takes without repeating any action, the production of the film itself tries to be aware of its outsider position looking at a contemporary, vastly booming Third World Country and its cultural history of 5,000 years by simply capturing and re-enacting experienced situations. Trying to avoid a clear genre definition to this film, it is entirely shot on location in the city of Mumbai and its suburbia. Both performers, Gopal and Nandhini, work on regular day jobs and live in Bombay’s suburbia--and have never participated in a film project.

A Formal Film in Nine Episodes, Prologue & Epilogue

35 mm film & HD-multiple-channel-projection for exhibition space, colour, Dolby Sr 5.1, 50 min
Hindi, Tamil with English subtitles

The Film describes a contemporary Asian Metropolis through an observational, anthropological approach of filmmaking. Each scenery in those nine episodes depicts landscape, architecture, interiors or humans from rural communities to factories, medical facilities or ancient and religious sites which all share miraculous beauty, a critical view on the cities development as well as cultural phenomenas and aesthetic explorations. Slowly establishing two characters, the film leaves its documentarian nature and progresses into a narrative, which purely follows two humans, sharing their movements in time and space letting us remember a cinema of love in the Asian context. Shot on 35 mm in only single takes without repeating any action, the production of the film itself tries to be aware of its outsider position looking at a contemporary, vastly booming Third World Country and its cultural history of 5,000 years by simply capturing and re-enacting experienced situations. Trying to avoid a clear genre definition to this film, it is entirely shot on location in the city of Mumbai and its suburbia. Both performers, Gopal and Nandhini, work on regular day jobs and live in Bombay’s suburbia--and have never participated in a film project.

A Formal Film in Nine Episodes, Prologue & Epilogue

35 mm film & HD-multiple-channel-projection for exhibition space, colour, Dolby Sr 5.1, 50 min
Hindi, Tamil with English subtitles

The Film describes a contemporary Asian Metropolis through an observational, anthropological approach of filmmaking. Each scenery in those nine episodes depicts landscape, architecture, interiors or humans from rural communities to factories, medical facilities or ancient and religious sites which all share miraculous beauty, a critical view on the cities development as well as cultural phenomenas and aesthetic explorations. Slowly establishing two characters, the film leaves its documentarian nature and progresses into a narrative, which purely follows two humans, sharing their movements in time and space letting us remember a cinema of love in the Asian context. Shot on 35 mm in only single takes without repeating any action, the production of the film itself tries to be aware of its outsider position looking at a contemporary, vastly booming Third World Country and its cultural history of 5,000 years by simply capturing and re-enacting experienced situations. Trying to avoid a clear genre definition to this film, it is entirely shot on location in the city of Mumbai and its suburbia. Both performers, Gopal and Nandhini, work on regular day jobs and live in Bombay’s suburbia--and have never participated in a film project.

A Formal Film in Nine Episodes, Prologue & Epilogue

35 mm film & HD-multiple-channel-projection for exhibition space, colour, Dolby Sr 5.1, 50 min
Hindi, Tamil with English subtitles

The Film describes a contemporary Asian Metropolis through an observational, anthropological approach of filmmaking. Each scenery in those nine episodes depicts landscape, architecture, interiors or humans from rural communities to factories, medical facilities or ancient and religious sites which all share miraculous beauty, a critical view on the cities development as well as cultural phenomenas and aesthetic explorations. Slowly establishing two characters, the film leaves its documentarian nature and progresses into a narrative, which purely follows two humans, sharing their movements in time and space letting us remember a cinema of love in the Asian context. Shot on 35 mm in only single takes without repeating any action, the production of the film itself tries to be aware of its outsider position looking at a contemporary, vastly booming Third World Country and its cultural history of 5,000 years by simply capturing and re-enacting experienced situations. Trying to avoid a clear genre definition to this film, it is entirely shot on location in the city of Mumbai and its suburbia. Both performers, Gopal and Nandhini, work on regular day jobs and live in Bombay’s suburbia--and have never participated in a film project.

A Formal Film in Nine Episodes, Prologue & Epilogue

35 mm film & HD-multiple-channel-projection for exhibition space, colour, Dolby Sr 5.1, 50 min
Hindi, Tamil with English subtitles

The Film describes a contemporary Asian Metropolis through an observational, anthropological approach of filmmaking. Each scenery in those nine episodes depicts landscape, architecture, interiors or humans from rural communities to factories, medical facilities or ancient and religious sites which all share miraculous beauty, a critical view on the cities development as well as cultural phenomenas and aesthetic explorations. Slowly establishing two characters, the film leaves its documentarian nature and progresses into a narrative, which purely follows two humans, sharing their movements in time and space letting us remember a cinema of love in the Asian context. Shot on 35 mm in only single takes without repeating any action, the production of the film itself tries to be aware of its outsider position looking at a contemporary, vastly booming Third World Country and its cultural history of 5,000 years by simply capturing and re-enacting experienced situations. Trying to avoid a clear genre definition to this film, it is entirely shot on location in the city of Mumbai and its suburbia. Both performers, Gopal and Nandhini, work on regular day jobs and live in Bombay’s suburbia--and have never participated in a film project.

Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974

Synchronized dual 16 mm film installation with sound, B/W, 13 min
English

“Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974“ revisits one of the industrial structures Lewis Baltz documented in his historic “New Topographics“ from the outside and depicts the interior setting of a metal workshop with an eleven minute tracking shot. During this time, the 1974 book version has been reconsidered from back to front, each turning page a montage within the continuous 16 mm black and white footage. An interview with J.R. Billington, a company owner in this building for nineteen years, discusses the socio-economical situation in military manufacturing in Orange County in the 1980‘s and today.

Voice Over: Leigh Ledare
In Conversation: Jim R. Billington
Cinematographer: Norbert Shieh
Sound: Wilson C. Busfield
Grip: Patrick Perez
Title Design: Devin Dailey
Shot on location in Irvine, California and The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Produced by [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2009 USA / Germany

Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974

Synchronized dual 16 mm film installation with sound, B/W, 13 min
English

“Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974“ revisits one of the industrial structures Lewis Baltz documented in his historic “New Topographics“ from the outside and depicts the interior setting of a metal workshop with an eleven minute tracking shot. During this time, the 1974 book version has been reconsidered from back to front, each turning page a montage within the continuous 16 mm black and white footage. An interview with J.R. Billington, a company owner in this building for nineteen years, discusses the socio-economical situation in military manufacturing in Orange County in the 1980‘s and today.

Voice Over: Leigh Ledare
In Conversation: Jim R. Billington
Cinematographer: Norbert Shieh
Sound: Wilson C. Busfield
Grip: Patrick Perez
Title Design: Devin Dailey
Shot on location in Irvine, California and The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Produced by [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2009 USA / Germany

Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974

Synchronized dual 16 mm film installation with sound, B/W, 13 min
English

“Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974“ revisits one of the industrial structures Lewis Baltz documented in his historic “New Topographics“ from the outside and depicts the interior setting of a metal workshop with an eleven minute tracking shot. During this time, the 1974 book version has been reconsidered from back to front, each turning page a montage within the continuous 16 mm black and white footage. An interview with J.R. Billington, a company owner in this building for nineteen years, discusses the socio-economical situation in military manufacturing in Orange County in the 1980‘s and today.

Voice Over: Leigh Ledare
In Conversation: Jim R. Billington
Cinematographer: Norbert Shieh
Sound: Wilson C. Busfield
Grip: Patrick Perez
Title Design: Devin Dailey
Shot on location in Irvine, California and The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Produced by [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2009 USA / Germany

Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974

Synchronized dual 16 mm film installation with sound, B/W, 13 min
English

“Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974“ revisits one of the industrial structures Lewis Baltz documented in his historic “New Topographics“ from the outside and depicts the interior setting of a metal workshop with an eleven minute tracking shot. During this time, the 1974 book version has been reconsidered from back to front, each turning page a montage within the continuous 16 mm black and white footage. An interview with J.R. Billington, a company owner in this building for nineteen years, discusses the socio-economical situation in military manufacturing in Orange County in the 1980‘s and today.

Voice Over: Leigh Ledare
In Conversation: Jim R. Billington
Cinematographer: Norbert Shieh
Sound: Wilson C. Busfield
Grip: Patrick Perez
Title Design: Devin Dailey
Shot on location in Irvine, California and The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Produced by [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2009 USA / Germany

The Los Angeles River-Project, 2010

35 mm film & HD projection, colour, Dolby SR 5.1, 80 min

“The Los Angeles River–Project“ explores-in the format of a feature length film-the complex political discussion of the river’s status and the environmental and social impact of being corralled into a flood control system over seventy years ago. The conflict is manifested by the river‘s unclear and unresolved definition. (...) This film is an investigation into the urban landscape, and develops along this frontier of the socialized wilderness, taking into account technology and planning, the command of nature and its demarcation with the urban, as reflected through the stateless person who inhabits this denaturalized and destroyed environment. Despite these extremes the two protagonists with very different backgrounds and reference systems, meet at the riverbank; whilst the scientist Brent takes water samples and monitors the river‘s local wildlife, he encounters the homeless Marvin and begins to investigate his survival strategy.

The Los Angeles River-Project, 2010

35 mm film & HD projection, colour, Dolby SR 5.1, 80 min

“The Los Angeles River–Project“ explores-in the format of a feature length film-the complex political discussion of the river’s status and the environmental and social impact of being corralled into a flood control system over seventy years ago. The conflict is manifested by the river‘s unclear and unresolved definition. (...) This film is an investigation into the urban landscape, and develops along this frontier of the socialized wilderness, taking into account technology and planning, the command of nature and its demarcation with the urban, as reflected through the stateless person who inhabits this denaturalized and destroyed environment. Despite these extremes the two protagonists with very different backgrounds and reference systems, meet at the riverbank; whilst the scientist Brent takes water samples and monitors the river‘s local wildlife, he encounters the homeless Marvin and begins to investigate his survival strategy.

The Los Angeles River-Project, 2010

35 mm film & HD projection, colour, Dolby SR 5.1, 80 min

“The Los Angeles River–Project“ explores-in the format of a feature length film-the complex political discussion of the river’s status and the environmental and social impact of being corralled into a flood control system over seventy years ago. The conflict is manifested by the river‘s unclear and unresolved definition. (...) This film is an investigation into the urban landscape, and develops along this frontier of the socialized wilderness, taking into account technology and planning, the command of nature and its demarcation with the urban, as reflected through the stateless person who inhabits this denaturalized and destroyed environment. Despite these extremes the two protagonists with very different backgrounds and reference systems, meet at the riverbank; whilst the scientist Brent takes water samples and monitors the river‘s local wildlife, he encounters the homeless Marvin and begins to investigate his survival strategy.

The Los Angeles River-Project, 2010

35 mm film & HD projection, colour, Dolby SR 5.1, 80 min

“The Los Angeles River–Project“ explores-in the format of a feature length film-the complex political discussion of the river’s status and the environmental and social impact of being corralled into a flood control system over seventy years ago. The conflict is manifested by the river‘s unclear and unresolved definition. (...) This film is an investigation into the urban landscape, and develops along this frontier of the socialized wilderness, taking into account technology and planning, the command of nature and its demarcation with the urban, as reflected through the stateless person who inhabits this denaturalized and destroyed environment. Despite these extremes the two protagonists with very different backgrounds and reference systems, meet at the riverbank; whilst the scientist Brent takes water samples and monitors the river‘s local wildlife, he encounters the homeless Marvin and begins to investigate his survival strategy.

The Los Angeles River-Project, 2010

35 mm film & HD projection, colour, Dolby SR 5.1, 80 min

“The Los Angeles River–Project“ explores-in the format of a feature length film-the complex political discussion of the river’s status and the environmental and social impact of being corralled into a flood control system over seventy years ago. The conflict is manifested by the river‘s unclear and unresolved definition. (...) This film is an investigation into the urban landscape, and develops along this frontier of the socialized wilderness, taking into account technology and planning, the command of nature and its demarcation with the urban, as reflected through the stateless person who inhabits this denaturalized and destroyed environment. Despite these extremes the two protagonists with very different backgrounds and reference systems, meet at the riverbank; whilst the scientist Brent takes water samples and monitors the river‘s local wildlife, he encounters the homeless Marvin and begins to investigate his survival strategy.

Yet Untitled [“Pieces of Nature“], 2008

S-16 mm film transferred to HD, 16:9, colour, stereo, 11’30 min
English and German with English subtitles

“Yet Untitled [‘Pieces of Nature‘]“ (2008) describes both performance and studio film production. Situated in a loose, self-reflexive narrative poised between the traditions of structural film, dance and theater, the carefullychoreographed film follows actors in what appears to be a casting process. Breathing, moving, and literally constructing the film before our eyes, crew members and the director himself are also revealed as actors, literally mirroring a photograph by Jeff Wall‘s famed photograph “Picture for a woman“ (1979). Text by Amy Patton (excerpt).

Pfeifer’s recourse to the canon of classical genre painting and postmodern dia-positives, his transformation of art historical material into moving images and his psychoanalytically loaded meditation on spectatorship merge into moments of growing distance towards the notion of essence. Niklas Luhmann discusses this tendency as metamedialization, the interlacing of different realities and their perception as symbolic systems. The actor’s speculations on their very roles, their relations among each other, their indirect communication with the director and last but of course not least the mirror wall–Pfeifer’s delicate web of representational strategies foregrounds exactly this inter-mediality, the symbolic power that jostles our imagination and fosters the wide range of associations immersing in the very process of meaning making. But what cultural consequence is to follow? The ambivalent relation of the as highly as hermetically loaded studio space and its factual surrounding is becoming clear when Pfeifer closes his film with the shot of an actor leaving through the back door of the studio onto a real road. The notion of “the streets“ and its oppositional model of agency contrasts intensely with the constructedness of an ‘art-icifical’ realm of image production. This provocative coda is the powerful critique of Pfeifer’s piece. (...) Pfeifer’s particular synthesis of the real and the symbolic, the representative and the sensuous ultimately manifest the philosophical depth of the piece without straightening out the paradoxical discomfort of his very medium.

Text by Julia Moritz

Cast: Evelyne Cannard, Simon Denny, Assaf Hochman, Andrew Kerton, Anca Rimnic
Munteanu, Mira Partecke, Bastian Trost
Cinematography: Max Penzel
Sound Design: Thomas Wallmann
Montage: Mario Pfeifer/ Amy Patton
Sound Recording: Michael Klöfkorn
Light Design: Patrick Albring
Still Photographer: Eric Bell
Produced by Mario Pfeifer, Amy Patton [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2008 Germany

Yet Untitled [“Pieces of Nature“], 2008

S-16 mm film transferred to HD, 16:9, colour, stereo, 11’30 min
English and German with English subtitles

“Yet Untitled [‘Pieces of Nature‘]“ (2008) describes both performance and studio film production. Situated in a loose, self-reflexive narrative poised between the traditions of structural film, dance and theater, the carefullychoreographed film follows actors in what appears to be a casting process. Breathing, moving, and literally constructing the film before our eyes, crew members and the director himself are also revealed as actors, literally mirroring a photograph by Jeff Wall‘s famed photograph “Picture for a woman“ (1979). Text by Amy Patton (excerpt).

Pfeifer’s recourse to the canon of classical genre painting and postmodern dia-positives, his transformation of art historical material into moving images and his psychoanalytically loaded meditation on spectatorship merge into moments of growing distance towards the notion of essence. Niklas Luhmann discusses this tendency as metamedialization, the interlacing of different realities and their perception as symbolic systems. The actor’s speculations on their very roles, their relations among each other, their indirect communication with the director and last but of course not least the mirror wall–Pfeifer’s delicate web of representational strategies foregrounds exactly this inter-mediality, the symbolic power that jostles our imagination and fosters the wide range of associations immersing in the very process of meaning making. But what cultural consequence is to follow? The ambivalent relation of the as highly as hermetically loaded studio space and its factual surrounding is becoming clear when Pfeifer closes his film with the shot of an actor leaving through the back door of the studio onto a real road. The notion of “the streets“ and its oppositional model of agency contrasts intensely with the constructedness of an ‘art-icifical’ realm of image production. This provocative coda is the powerful critique of Pfeifer’s piece. (...) Pfeifer’s particular synthesis of the real and the symbolic, the representative and the sensuous ultimately manifest the philosophical depth of the piece without straightening out the paradoxical discomfort of his very medium.

Text by Julia Moritz

Cast: Evelyne Cannard, Simon Denny, Assaf Hochman, Andrew Kerton, Anca Rimnic
Munteanu, Mira Partecke, Bastian Trost
Cinematography: Max Penzel
Sound Design: Thomas Wallmann
Montage: Mario Pfeifer/ Amy Patton
Sound Recording: Michael Klöfkorn
Light Design: Patrick Albring
Still Photographer: Eric Bell
Produced by Mario Pfeifer, Amy Patton [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2008 Germany

Yet Untitled [“Pieces of Nature“], 2008

S-16 mm film transferred to HD, 16:9, colour, stereo, 11’30 min
English and German with English subtitles

“Yet Untitled [‘Pieces of Nature‘]“ (2008) describes both performance and studio film production. Situated in a loose, self-reflexive narrative poised between the traditions of structural film, dance and theater, the carefullychoreographed film follows actors in what appears to be a casting process. Breathing, moving, and literally constructing the film before our eyes, crew members and the director himself are also revealed as actors, literally mirroring a photograph by Jeff Wall‘s famed photograph “Picture for a woman“ (1979). Text by Amy Patton (excerpt).

Pfeifer’s recourse to the canon of classical genre painting and postmodern dia-positives, his transformation of art historical material into moving images and his psychoanalytically loaded meditation on spectatorship merge into moments of growing distance towards the notion of essence. Niklas Luhmann discusses this tendency as metamedialization, the interlacing of different realities and their perception as symbolic systems. The actor’s speculations on their very roles, their relations among each other, their indirect communication with the director and last but of course not least the mirror wall–Pfeifer’s delicate web of representational strategies foregrounds exactly this inter-mediality, the symbolic power that jostles our imagination and fosters the wide range of associations immersing in the very process of meaning making. But what cultural consequence is to follow? The ambivalent relation of the as highly as hermetically loaded studio space and its factual surrounding is becoming clear when Pfeifer closes his film with the shot of an actor leaving through the back door of the studio onto a real road. The notion of “the streets“ and its oppositional model of agency contrasts intensely with the constructedness of an ‘art-icifical’ realm of image production. This provocative coda is the powerful critique of Pfeifer’s piece. (...) Pfeifer’s particular synthesis of the real and the symbolic, the representative and the sensuous ultimately manifest the philosophical depth of the piece without straightening out the paradoxical discomfort of his very medium.

Text by Julia Moritz

Cast: Evelyne Cannard, Simon Denny, Assaf Hochman, Andrew Kerton, Anca Rimnic
Munteanu, Mira Partecke, Bastian Trost
Cinematography: Max Penzel
Sound Design: Thomas Wallmann
Montage: Mario Pfeifer/ Amy Patton
Sound Recording: Michael Klöfkorn
Light Design: Patrick Albring
Still Photographer: Eric Bell
Produced by Mario Pfeifer, Amy Patton [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2008 Germany

Yet Untitled [“Pieces of Nature“], 2008

S-16 mm film transferred to HD, 16:9, colour, stereo, 11’30 min
English and German with English subtitles

“Yet Untitled [‘Pieces of Nature‘]“ (2008) describes both performance and studio film production. Situated in a loose, self-reflexive narrative poised between the traditions of structural film, dance and theater, the carefullychoreographed film follows actors in what appears to be a casting process. Breathing, moving, and literally constructing the film before our eyes, crew members and the director himself are also revealed as actors, literally mirroring a photograph by Jeff Wall‘s famed photograph “Picture for a woman“ (1979). Text by Amy Patton (excerpt).

Pfeifer’s recourse to the canon of classical genre painting and postmodern dia-positives, his transformation of art historical material into moving images and his psychoanalytically loaded meditation on spectatorship merge into moments of growing distance towards the notion of essence. Niklas Luhmann discusses this tendency as metamedialization, the interlacing of different realities and their perception as symbolic systems. The actor’s speculations on their very roles, their relations among each other, their indirect communication with the director and last but of course not least the mirror wall–Pfeifer’s delicate web of representational strategies foregrounds exactly this inter-mediality, the symbolic power that jostles our imagination and fosters the wide range of associations immersing in the very process of meaning making. But what cultural consequence is to follow? The ambivalent relation of the as highly as hermetically loaded studio space and its factual surrounding is becoming clear when Pfeifer closes his film with the shot of an actor leaving through the back door of the studio onto a real road. The notion of “the streets“ and its oppositional model of agency contrasts intensely with the constructedness of an ‘art-icifical’ realm of image production. This provocative coda is the powerful critique of Pfeifer’s piece. (...) Pfeifer’s particular synthesis of the real and the symbolic, the representative and the sensuous ultimately manifest the philosophical depth of the piece without straightening out the paradoxical discomfort of his very medium.

Text by Julia Moritz

Cast: Evelyne Cannard, Simon Denny, Assaf Hochman, Andrew Kerton, Anca Rimnic
Munteanu, Mira Partecke, Bastian Trost
Cinematography: Max Penzel
Sound Design: Thomas Wallmann
Montage: Mario Pfeifer/ Amy Patton
Sound Recording: Michael Klöfkorn
Light Design: Patrick Albring
Still Photographer: Eric Bell
Produced by Mario Pfeifer, Amy Patton [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2008 Germany

Yet Untitled [“Pieces of Nature“], 2008

S-16 mm film transferred to HD, 16:9, colour, stereo, 11’30 min
English and German with English subtitles

“Yet Untitled [‘Pieces of Nature‘]“ (2008) describes both performance and studio film production. Situated in a loose, self-reflexive narrative poised between the traditions of structural film, dance and theater, the carefullychoreographed film follows actors in what appears to be a casting process. Breathing, moving, and literally constructing the film before our eyes, crew members and the director himself are also revealed as actors, literally mirroring a photograph by Jeff Wall‘s famed photograph “Picture for a woman“ (1979). Text by Amy Patton (excerpt).

Pfeifer’s recourse to the canon of classical genre painting and postmodern dia-positives, his transformation of art historical material into moving images and his psychoanalytically loaded meditation on spectatorship merge into moments of growing distance towards the notion of essence. Niklas Luhmann discusses this tendency as metamedialization, the interlacing of different realities and their perception as symbolic systems. The actor’s speculations on their very roles, their relations among each other, their indirect communication with the director and last but of course not least the mirror wall–Pfeifer’s delicate web of representational strategies foregrounds exactly this inter-mediality, the symbolic power that jostles our imagination and fosters the wide range of associations immersing in the very process of meaning making. But what cultural consequence is to follow? The ambivalent relation of the as highly as hermetically loaded studio space and its factual surrounding is becoming clear when Pfeifer closes his film with the shot of an actor leaving through the back door of the studio onto a real road. The notion of “the streets“ and its oppositional model of agency contrasts intensely with the constructedness of an ‘art-icifical’ realm of image production. This provocative coda is the powerful critique of Pfeifer’s piece. (...) Pfeifer’s particular synthesis of the real and the symbolic, the representative and the sensuous ultimately manifest the philosophical depth of the piece without straightening out the paradoxical discomfort of his very medium.

Text by Julia Moritz

Cast: Evelyne Cannard, Simon Denny, Assaf Hochman, Andrew Kerton, Anca Rimnic
Munteanu, Mira Partecke, Bastian Trost
Cinematography: Max Penzel
Sound Design: Thomas Wallmann
Montage: Mario Pfeifer/ Amy Patton
Sound Recording: Michael Klöfkorn
Light Design: Patrick Albring
Still Photographer: Eric Bell
Produced by Mario Pfeifer, Amy Patton [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2008 Germany

Yet Untitled [“Pieces of Nature“], 2008

S-16 mm film transferred to HD, 16:9, colour, stereo, 11’30 min
English and German with English subtitles

“Yet Untitled [‘Pieces of Nature‘]“ (2008) describes both performance and studio film production. Situated in a loose, self-reflexive narrative poised between the traditions of structural film, dance and theater, the carefullychoreographed film follows actors in what appears to be a casting process. Breathing, moving, and literally constructing the film before our eyes, crew members and the director himself are also revealed as actors, literally mirroring a photograph by Jeff Wall‘s famed photograph “Picture for a woman“ (1979). Text by Amy Patton (excerpt).

Pfeifer’s recourse to the canon of classical genre painting and postmodern dia-positives, his transformation of art historical material into moving images and his psychoanalytically loaded meditation on spectatorship merge into moments of growing distance towards the notion of essence. Niklas Luhmann discusses this tendency as metamedialization, the interlacing of different realities and their perception as symbolic systems. The actor’s speculations on their very roles, their relations among each other, their indirect communication with the director and last but of course not least the mirror wall–Pfeifer’s delicate web of representational strategies foregrounds exactly this inter-mediality, the symbolic power that jostles our imagination and fosters the wide range of associations immersing in the very process of meaning making. But what cultural consequence is to follow? The ambivalent relation of the as highly as hermetically loaded studio space and its factual surrounding is becoming clear when Pfeifer closes his film with the shot of an actor leaving through the back door of the studio onto a real road. The notion of “the streets“ and its oppositional model of agency contrasts intensely with the constructedness of an ‘art-icifical’ realm of image production. This provocative coda is the powerful critique of Pfeifer’s piece. (...) Pfeifer’s particular synthesis of the real and the symbolic, the representative and the sensuous ultimately manifest the philosophical depth of the piece without straightening out the paradoxical discomfort of his very medium.

Text by Julia Moritz

Cast: Evelyne Cannard, Simon Denny, Assaf Hochman, Andrew Kerton, Anca Rimnic
Munteanu, Mira Partecke, Bastian Trost
Cinematography: Max Penzel
Sound Design: Thomas Wallmann
Montage: Mario Pfeifer/ Amy Patton
Sound Recording: Michael Klöfkorn
Light Design: Patrick Albring
Still Photographer: Eric Bell
Produced by Mario Pfeifer, Amy Patton [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2008 Germany

Yet Untitled [“Pieces of Nature“], 2008

S-16 mm film transferred to HD, 16:9, colour, stereo, 11’30 min
English and German with English subtitles

“Yet Untitled [‘Pieces of Nature‘]“ (2008) describes both performance and studio film production. Situated in a loose, self-reflexive narrative poised between the traditions of structural film, dance and theater, the carefullychoreographed film follows actors in what appears to be a casting process. Breathing, moving, and literally constructing the film before our eyes, crew members and the director himself are also revealed as actors, literally mirroring a photograph by Jeff Wall‘s famed photograph “Picture for a woman“ (1979). Text by Amy Patton (excerpt).

Pfeifer’s recourse to the canon of classical genre painting and postmodern dia-positives, his transformation of art historical material into moving images and his psychoanalytically loaded meditation on spectatorship merge into moments of growing distance towards the notion of essence. Niklas Luhmann discusses this tendency as metamedialization, the interlacing of different realities and their perception as symbolic systems. The actor’s speculations on their very roles, their relations among each other, their indirect communication with the director and last but of course not least the mirror wall–Pfeifer’s delicate web of representational strategies foregrounds exactly this inter-mediality, the symbolic power that jostles our imagination and fosters the wide range of associations immersing in the very process of meaning making. But what cultural consequence is to follow? The ambivalent relation of the as highly as hermetically loaded studio space and its factual surrounding is becoming clear when Pfeifer closes his film with the shot of an actor leaving through the back door of the studio onto a real road. The notion of “the streets“ and its oppositional model of agency contrasts intensely with the constructedness of an ‘art-icifical’ realm of image production. This provocative coda is the powerful critique of Pfeifer’s piece. (...) Pfeifer’s particular synthesis of the real and the symbolic, the representative and the sensuous ultimately manifest the philosophical depth of the piece without straightening out the paradoxical discomfort of his very medium.

Text by Julia Moritz

Cast: Evelyne Cannard, Simon Denny, Assaf Hochman, Andrew Kerton, Anca Rimnic
Munteanu, Mira Partecke, Bastian Trost
Cinematography: Max Penzel
Sound Design: Thomas Wallmann
Montage: Mario Pfeifer/ Amy Patton
Sound Recording: Michael Klöfkorn
Light Design: Patrick Albring
Still Photographer: Eric Bell
Produced by Mario Pfeifer, Amy Patton [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer

© 2008 Germany

Untitled [“Two Guys“], 2008

HD-video 16:9, colour, stereo, 7 min

Untitled [“Two Guys“] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/ playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence –a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [“Two Guys“] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a “globalized society“ and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.

Cast: Sami Moss Mardina, Yeisen Acosta Medina
Cinematograpy: Matthias Biber
Montage: Mario Pfeifer
Sound design: Thomas Wallmann
Light design: Manuel Kinzer
Produced by Jakob Schillinger, Mario Pfeifer [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
Funded by KulturAllianzen, Interflugs Berlin, Asta Berlin

© 2008 Germany

Untitled [“Two Guys“], 2008

HD-video 16:9, colour, stereo, 7 min

Untitled [“Two Guys“] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/ playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence –a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [“Two Guys“] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a “globalized society“ and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.

Cast: Sami Moss Mardina, Yeisen Acosta Medina
Cinematograpy: Matthias Biber
Montage: Mario Pfeifer
Sound design: Thomas Wallmann
Light design: Manuel Kinzer
Produced by Jakob Schillinger, Mario Pfeifer [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
Funded by KulturAllianzen, Interflugs Berlin, Asta Berlin

© 2008 Germany

Untitled [“Two Guys“], 2008

HD-video 16:9, colour, stereo, 7 min

Untitled [“Two Guys“] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/ playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence –a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [“Two Guys“] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a “globalized society“ and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.

Cast: Sami Moss Mardina, Yeisen Acosta Medina
Cinematograpy: Matthias Biber
Montage: Mario Pfeifer
Sound design: Thomas Wallmann
Light design: Manuel Kinzer
Produced by Jakob Schillinger, Mario Pfeifer [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
Funded by KulturAllianzen, Interflugs Berlin, Asta Berlin

© 2008 Germany

Untitled [“Two Guys“], 2008

HD-video 16:9, colour, stereo, 7 min

Untitled [“Two Guys“] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/ playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence –a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [“Two Guys“] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a “globalized society“ and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.

Cast: Sami Moss Mardina, Yeisen Acosta Medina
Cinematograpy: Matthias Biber
Montage: Mario Pfeifer
Sound design: Thomas Wallmann
Light design: Manuel Kinzer
Produced by Jakob Schillinger, Mario Pfeifer [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
Funded by KulturAllianzen, Interflugs Berlin, Asta Berlin

© 2008 Germany

Untitled [“Two Guys“], 2008

HD-video 16:9, colour, stereo, 7 min

Untitled [“Two Guys“] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/ playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence –a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [“Two Guys“] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a “globalized society“ and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.

Cast: Sami Moss Mardina, Yeisen Acosta Medina
Cinematograpy: Matthias Biber
Montage: Mario Pfeifer
Sound design: Thomas Wallmann
Light design: Manuel Kinzer
Produced by Jakob Schillinger, Mario Pfeifer [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
Funded by KulturAllianzen, Interflugs Berlin, Asta Berlin

© 2008 Germany

Untitled [“Two Guys“], 2008

HD-video 16:9, colour, stereo, 7 min

Untitled [“Two Guys“] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/ playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence –a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [“Two Guys“] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a “globalized society“ and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.

Cast: Sami Moss Mardina, Yeisen Acosta Medina
Cinematograpy: Matthias Biber
Montage: Mario Pfeifer
Sound design: Thomas Wallmann
Light design: Manuel Kinzer
Produced by Jakob Schillinger, Mario Pfeifer [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
Funded by KulturAllianzen, Interflugs Berlin, Asta Berlin

© 2008 Germany

Untitled [“Two Guys“], 2008

HD-video 16:9, colour, stereo, 7 min

Untitled [“Two Guys“] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/ playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence –a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [“Two Guys“] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a “globalized society“ and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.

Cast: Sami Moss Mardina, Yeisen Acosta Medina
Cinematograpy: Matthias Biber
Montage: Mario Pfeifer
Sound design: Thomas Wallmann
Light design: Manuel Kinzer
Produced by Jakob Schillinger, Mario Pfeifer [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
Funded by KulturAllianzen, Interflugs Berlin, Asta Berlin

© 2008 Germany

Untitled [“Two Guys“], 2008

HD-video 16:9, colour, stereo, 7 min

Untitled [“Two Guys“] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/ playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence –a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [“Two Guys“] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a “globalized society“ and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.

Cast: Sami Moss Mardina, Yeisen Acosta Medina
Cinematograpy: Matthias Biber
Montage: Mario Pfeifer
Sound design: Thomas Wallmann
Light design: Manuel Kinzer
Produced by Jakob Schillinger, Mario Pfeifer [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
Funded by KulturAllianzen, Interflugs Berlin, Asta Berlin

© 2008 Germany