In 2014 Sasha Pirker und Lotte Schreiber made a film together which was immediately awarded the Prize for Innovative Cinema as part of the Diagonale. In grainy black-and-white, static shots and rhythmic montages, which time and again are briefly interrupted and broken up by colourful video recordings, they presented a filmic exploration of space that plumbs the potentiality of an exhibition room. The voiceover speaks of the prominent significance of certain walls, of spatial moods and of the special quality present on account of the large window openings.
At the same time as these explanations and the remarks on daylight and artificial light, blackouts and residual light, we see how the space is measured in rigid camera shots through the interplay of light and shadow. What sounds like engagement with the Space05 of the Kunsthaus Graz is their award-winning film ‘EXHIBITION TALKS,’ which focuses on an industrial building from the 1920s that was converted into exhibition space. In this work the stylistic traits of the two film-makers ideally complement one another, both in terms of their aesthetic and choice of theme. Both artists convey in their works the language of form of architecture and the effect of spaces on the medium of film, directing their attention to buildings in which the spirit of utopia manifests itself.
In this sense, the exhibition in the Kunsthaus Graz, a constructed architectural vision from the 1960s, could be seen almost as a continuation of ‘EXHIBITION TALKS.’ In this show the engagement with ‘film’ announced in the title is expanded, and the moving pictures with framed images will give rise to a dialogue that concerns relations between reality and fiction, bodies and architecture, political space and the private sphere, as well as minimalist aesthetics and brutalist side-effects.
