Projektraum [Project Space]

With her abstract video works, Michaela Grill (born 1971 in Feldbach, lives in Vienna) has developed into one of Austria’s leading representatives of digital art since 1999. The subjects of the filmic material that Grill finds both in urban space as well in rural settings are present in her objective representation as mere traces at the most. What interests the artist are the background noises, the mistakes in the picture, which are filtered and removed by the eye, the brain or the lens. Isolating this information which lies behind the picture’s superficial structure, condensing and separating it from the picture: this is what Michaela Grill detects when she ‘looks behind the pictures’. The role which falls to the viewer in terms of reception is significant, for Grill’s videos allow for a broad range of interpretations. The associative working approach also concerns the soundtrack, which is accorded absolutely equal importance with the pictorial level.

The works are always the result of close collaboration and intense contact with experimental musicians, leading to image and sound mutually influencing each other, each converging with the other and blending into an atmospheric overall composition, indispensable to both.

On the occasion of the annual cooperation with the Diagonale [Graz’s film festival], the artist conceived an audiovisual dream machine together with musician Andreas Berger, which will be on view in the Projektraum [Project Space] by Eric Kläring and Heimo Zobernig.

My Restless Heart tells of Fernweh (wanderlust), of the ‘presence of an absent one, of the yearning for the unknown, for the difference, which carries within it the hope of freedom. A projection which can never be fulfilled’. (Michaela Grill)

It is a merging of melancholic photographs of different places, from which Michaela Grill has developed six films, which, projected on walls and ceilings of the cramped space, condense to form an abundance of impressions. This decision to pack ‘the whole world’ into barely 30 sq. feet and thus to explode the confines of the projection room is a perfect example of the poetry in Grill’s works.

In one version of the work related to the installation, the trailer for the Diagonale also occurs. This can be seen in Graz’ cinemas before and during the festival.