lurf repurposes the iconography and production values of hollywood literally as a digital brand rather than, as in traditional found footage films, hollywood as a producer of photographic images. the visual omnipotence of these companies - the insistent onslaught of their recurring brand imagery - and the accompanying aggressive musicality of their chopped up soundtracks are integrated and combined into a singular, homogenized mega-brand thundering HOLLYWOOD. who needs stories when the brands create their own? (daniel kasman)concept & realisation johann lurf | screening format 35mm | distribution / print source sixpackfilm
musical notes and memoranda, pads and pencils, patterns of various kinds, mixed with slips of paper, half-full martini glasses, ashtrays, death's heads - then the picture swings around (the coffee cup along with it!) and an ensemble arranged according to musical instrument has been committed to paper. constant movement, metamorphosis, variation and pleasant uncertainty: a concert hall? a movie theater? the picture's square remains, becoming in the course of the switch a bright square within the picture: a projection screen with an ensemble in the form of a projection screen in front of the ensemble, which is suddenly no more than a shadow of itself. madame press is dead. the imagination lives on. at least that seems to be the case. (christoph huber)
two little boys show up with cardboard toys. their out of season holiday experience in a camping hotel shifts into a traumatic cold war déjà vu. positioning their rockets and guns inside and outside the building they are withal telecommanded from the bedroom by their parents. (josef dabernig)
what looks like a beefy sea cucumber sunk in a toaster without casing is actually a computer-controlled organ of speech. from a youtube clip of the singing latex mouth montaged after and next to itself, norbert pfaffenbichler generates an unconventional collage of images. loops, duplications, and interferences ultimately condense the solo voice to a noisy-experimental drone composition - an austro-japanese audio-visual mosaic. (diagonale)
the close-mouthed protagonist (dabernig himself) passes through a deteriorating mediterranean countryside in the eponymous sedan, then stops suddenly, gets out and takes a picture of his car. the self-absorbed driving (accompanied by bel canto arias playing on the radio) always leads to a photo session, while the camera abandons man and car, turning its attention to the surrounding countryside in meticulous pans. (michael loebenstein)
puccini conservato uses a cd, a sound recording of some puccini music (from la bohème). the source of the sound (the loudspeakers) in a continuous hand-held panning (guided by the music), is intercut with shots of flowers or wood-fire, exemplifying the lyricism in puccini's music. by being a recording of a recording, the work proclaims the artificiality of the sound. however the beauty and humanity of the music comes through too. (michael snow)
travelling in a dining car, klangforum wien performs james clarke's quintet for oboe. but another central protagonist is the 16mm bolex film camera, which keeps shooting just parts of the performance because its spring mechanism requires rewinding at least every 29 seconds. the result is astonishing: the concert as a moment of concentration, the dining car as a contemplative place. (viennale)