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Light/Image/Illusion——The Aegina Academy
A Forum for Art and Science

By Gustav Deutsch and Hanna Schimek
14-22 May 2005, Aegina, Greece
Forum website:
http://www.light-image.net.

Reviewed by Martha Blassnigg

marthablassnigg@yahoo.com

The Aegina Academy, a cultural forum for art and science, was founded by the Austrian artists Gustav Deutsch and Hanna Schimek, with the aim to "contribute to the promotion of independent and critical dealings with media, thus taking a step in the direction of democratising the media" (Schimek and Deutsch, "Press Release"). At the background of pioneering film work, Deutsch and Schimek opened up their private laboratory on the beautiful island Aegina not only to the public, inhabitants, and Greek artists and scientists, but also to invited scientists and artists of international standing to participate in a discussion and exhibition forum, contained in a cultural project called the Aegina Academy. First realized in 2003 with the topic Light/Image/Reality, the Aegina Academy follow-up its debut this year with a theme focused on the interrelation between light, image and illusion, comprising a symposium, public lectures, art education projects and workshops, exhibitions, and film screenings. This review gives a brief overview on the Aegina Academy by situating its theme in a discussion within the wider framework of Gustav Deutsch’s and Hanna Schimek’s work.

Light/Image/Illusion opened with an exhibition cycle and lectures by neuro-scientist Richard L. Gregory and pre-cinema specialist Werner Nekes at the Goethe-Institute in Athens. In the following symposium in Aegina, organized by philosopher Fay Zika, international specialists from the disciplines art education, art history, philosophy, media and film studies, natural and social sciences (especially psychology, neuroscience and computer science), brought to attention various related aspects such as the psychological and physiological precondition of perception (see for example Freeman, Kubaczek, Pircher, Venieri, Vidnyánszky) veridical representation and fictional construction as in Virtual Reality or other new media environments (Jahrmann, Klett, Sarris), and an emphasis on art education and historical views on the history of technologies of optics and media art (Hyman, Peternak, Punt, Santorinaios, Zielinski). With a strong emphasis on philosophy, art-education and neuro-psychology, the symposium encouraged a stimulating discussion forum in a small but highly specialist community with outreaches to the public via several art educational and exhibition projects, public lectures and guided tours. A fuller account of the symposium and events at the Aegina Academy, can be found at
www.light-image.net.

The Aegina Academy emerged from a generous gesture by an individual artist and is a reflection of Deutsch’s energy in his creative work with the medium film and his exploration of public interface. Originally trained as an architect, Gustav Deutsch became an independent filmmaker in the late 1980’s often mentioned in the context of the contemporary Austrian avant-garde. His work, however, eludes any clear categorization and stands out through its originality and particularity, consisting, as it does, entirely of early film footage. This material is thoroughly researched by Deutsch and Schimek, and they have become familiar faces in film archives around the world where they mostly seem to disappear behind huge piles of reels. Deutsch’s films investigate the very mechanisms of cinema and perception, commenting on the artistic expressions of the intrinsic qualities of its medium. This approach is most accurately exemplified in the series Film ist., which can be interpreted as deconstruction of film in terms of language and movement. As Tom Gunning has pointed out in his article "Film ist. A Primer for a Visual World", this project can be defined as the first film theory on film. Now it becomes clear, however, that Deutsch and Schimek have ambitions that lie beyond the mere deconstruction of movement and time or an analysis of the interrelation between image and language in the cinematographic experience.

This becomes most apparent in Deutsch and Schimek’s work in Aegina, in particular in the Camera Obscura in Perdika, which is an integrated work of art embedded in the landscape and culture in a gentle and modest way——characteristics of their film work, which is also simultaneously personal and private, and generous and public. The Camera Obscura in Perdika is situated at the Southwest end of the island and has already become a major attraction. It is the world’s first Camera Obscura with a 360 degree panorama, sited at an optimal free standing location surrounded by a scenery of sea, islands and inland mountains. It really is a ‘Camera Obscura Rotunda’, a cylindrical wooden building, constructed by the architect Franz Berzl and Gustav Deutsch and realized in collaboration with Gavrillos Michalis. When the visitor enters from the startling bright light of the island into the dark, it takes time for the eyes to adjust before almost magically there appear the inverted images on the twelve surrounding translucent screens. After approximately 15 to 20 minutes, the eyes become fully adapted and are able to perceive small details such as the waves or even birds. Because the twelve holes in the wooden round construction overlap in the throw of their projection, a small section of each screen is repeated and this creates a complex visual experience wherein an object for example can appear three times on three successive screens. This artwork in public space is maintained by a guard from the village Perdika and has apparently gained great popularity amongst the inhabitants of the island who call it ‘Panagitsa’ (‘small chapel’). It is particularly appreciated by young lovers replaying some of the kiss-in-the-tunnel films that were so popular in early cinema.

In addition to this extraordinary experience of a multiple screen panorama, during the Aegina Academy every evening closed with a film screening in front of the Makellos Tower (built in the 17th century and housing the Greek Government when it transferred to Aegina in the 1820’s). Inside next to the organizer’s office there were some exhibitions of work by artists, including Deutsch and Schimek’s "Atlas" Part 1 and Athanassion’s photography project, and the installation "Kino-Illusion" by Mark-Paul Meyer form the Netherlands Filmmuseum on the top floor. "Kino-Illusion" occupied five windows on the top floor of the tower facing the courtyard, they were illuminated from the inside to reveal still frames from early films: one a single frame, the second a sequence of three frames, two with several single frames and a Marey movement study with a moving body in several postures within one frame. Next to these still images, which were also visible from the inside of the tower, the same images were also presented in a video sequence on a monitor at their original speed.

While the film enthusiast and early cinema specialist may have tended to investigate into the origins of these images in order to situate them in the context of a narrative or of film history in general, the installation "Kino-Illusion" inhibited any such formalization. The displayed images asked for contemplation rather than contextualization and held the viewer’s attention. This strategy was comparable with the moment when during the projection process the images are halted in the gate for a fragment of a second, while the shutter of the Maltese cross interrupts the light beam and as a consequence enforces the illusion of continuous movement in our visual perception. "Kino-Illusion’s" evocation of contemplation suggested that it is in our mind that these images move, start to move or cease to move; they not only invigorate virtual visual movement but also a freezing of the stream of thought interrelating the associations between single frames. More than movement, "Kino-Illusion" characterized the various time qualities involved in the cinema experience and by slowing down the time of the difference between the image sequences to a point zero: the fragments created a sense of timelessness. Because they were not entities in themselves, such as still photography usually presents, these images were open to all sides asking for associative framing, something that in this context they were neither able to fulfill nor allow. Though "Kino-Illusion" did not necessarily surrender the visitor to a metaphysical experience; the moving fragments on the Video screen did not, as may be expected, reconcile the impulse to actually see the flow of motion in the still frames, but rather extended the perception of time and movement, as for example in the slow-motion of some fragments. Finally and rather thoughtfully, the exhibition space on the top floor also included a small library with works on movement and film, illusion and perception, where the various deconstructed viewing experiences from the exhibitions could be integrated into a discussion about a possible alternative approach to the film experience, questioning a long tradition of orthodox treatments of film in theory as a language or as representations of reality.

The work with still frames at the Aegina Academy, as for example shown in "Kino-Illusion" and also in the exhibition "Illusionistic Quadrat" in the Laografiko Museum Aegina, resonated with Deutsch and Schimek’s most recent work; their picture collection "Atlas": an Image-Library containing more than 2000 images. Following an idea of art-historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929) who towards the end of his life expressed his core ideas on art history in his famous picture atlas ‘Mnemosyne’, panels with an assemblage of diverse images from different media (maps, photographs of paintings, drawings, etc.), Deutsch and Schimek produce image collages centering around the subject of light and image. This Atlas, named after the two symposia "Light/Image/Reality" and "Light/Image/Illusion" has been presented during the Aegina festival in 2003 and 2005, and also at the contemporary art museum Lentos in Linz in 2004 and is currently exhibited in the Kunsthalle in Vienna. Either on light boards lit from below (Linz), screened as image show from DVD (Aegina 2005), or the Light-box, projected images on the facade of the Kunsthalle in Vienna in June 2005, the flow of pictures plays with our perception of sequential images, creating illusions by false references and associations. Warburg’s crucial insights are reflected in the interrelation and meaning between the images, in which he saw archetypical meanings in the movement beyond the visible shapes and an invigoration of the Dionysian principal in art. While Warburg’s unorthodox approach found a place in the discipline of art history, possible relationships with the moving image technology, a new technology of his time, have been recently pointed out by Philippe-Alain Michaud. He establishes an interrelation between the mechanisms of cinema technology and Warburgs method of the ‘Mnemosyne’ in his recent publication Aby Warburg and the image in motion (which will be reviewed here next month). Warburg is currently undergoing a revival of interest and Deutsch and Schimek, truly visionaries in this respect, have anticipated this reconsideration of the relevance of his approach in contemporary discussions on the meaning of images and image technology in the context of new media environments. By moving away from the actual image in sequence running through a projector, Deutsch and Schimek’s focus on the still image seems to suggest a crucial shift in attention from movement to motion, an emphasis on the forces behind and beyond the actual surfaces, aspects which in retrospect can be traced throughout their oeuvre.

A full listing of Deutsch’s films can be found at
www.sixpackfilm.com.

References:

Gunning, Tom. "Film ist. "A Primer for a Visual World".
http://www.sixpackfilm.com/archive/texte/01_filmvideo/filmist_gunningE.html.

Michaud, Philippe-Alain. 2004. Aby Warburg and Image in Motion. New York: Zone Books.

"Film list Gustav Deutsch."
http://www.sixpackfilm.com/catalogue.php?lang=en&pid=1596.

 

 




Updated 1st June 2005


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