Michaela Grill

SIZE MATTERS . Raum für Kunst & Film / Space for Art & Film .  Margaretenstraße 110, 1050 Wien ICE MATTERS Michaela Grill Christian Ruschitzka                                                         Eröffnung / Opening                                Freitag / Friday 12.4.2024, 7-10 pm The exhibition will be open upon request till Sunday 14.4.2024 Wenn man an die Antarktis denkt, kommen einem zuerst endlose, wilde Landschaften aus Eis und Schnee in den Sinn. Ein unbewohnbarer Kontinent, der sich weigert, kolonisiert zu werden, und nur die abenteuerlustigsten Männer konnten der Natur widerstehen. Weniger bekannt ist, dass es neben den heldenhaften Erkundungen im Namen der Wissenschaft auch eine industrielle Ausbeutung der Region in großem Stil gab. Der Fokus der Ausstellung liegt auf den Spuren, die der Mensch vor Ort hinterlassen hat, und Michaela Grill stellt Fragen zu unserer Beziehung zu dieser abgelegenen Wildnis und unseren Interaktionen mit der Natur im allgemeinen. Die künstlerischen Interaktionen von Christian Ruschitzka scheinen die Weiterführung von Michaela Grills Fragestellungen zu sein, fast wie eine Antwort darauf, denn diese versuchen der Natur etwas zurückzugeben bzw solidarisch einzugreifen in ein System, das unausweichlich in ihr eigenes Verderbnis rast. DRINKS ON ICE!

© Michaela Grill, Antarctic Traces Revisited, 2024 https://migrill.klingt.org/ https://www.ruschitzka.at/

Cécile Delingou has just published her thesis „L’altération filmique : pour une expression écocentrique de la nature“ (Filmic alteration: for an ecocentric expression of nature) where she talks very insightfully about my work besides some of my favourite contemporary filmmakers.

here is the link if you’re interested:

https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/1866/32773

will be presented as part of the ATMOSPHERES exhibition of STEIERMARK SCHAU at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 15.01.2024 – 28.02.2024.

‚I’m floating in the most peculiar way‘ is rich in scientific image material: photographs of planetary surfaces, of microbial life frozen in the ice, and of freeze etchings from blasting microorganisms out of the ice. The shimmering/glowing orange and sun-like ground, however, give the impression that the viewer is floating through the glowing hot gases of an exoplanet and could immerse you in an experience featuring hot ice, ruby-red clouds, or metallic rain.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Azra Akšamija & Dietmar Offenhuber, Benedikt Alphart & Adina Camhy, Michaela Grill / Stefan Németh, Markus Jeschaunig, Rainer Kohlberger & Peter Kutin, Gudrun Krebitz, Ralo Mayer, Muntean/Rosenblum, Kay Walkowiak, Richard Wilhelmer & Sonja Mutić, Silvana Beraldo & Daniela Brasil

PARTICIPATING SCIENTISTS & RESEARCHERS: Nanna Bach-Møller, Patrick Barth, Ludmila Carone, Katy Chubb, Luca Fossati, Christiane Helling, Helena Lecoq Molinos, Emma Puranen, Dominic Samra, Alexandra Scherr, Jan Philip Sindel, Ruth-Sophie Taubner, Christine Moissl-Eichinger, Robert Höldrich, Franz Zotter, Hannes Mayer, Anita Rinner, Dieter Pirker

The Mobile Pavillion was curated by: Astrid Kury

is part of the Lost Highways, Embodied Travels program Kornelia Boczkowska is presenting at Uniondocs in New York as part of her book presentation on Dec 7 at 7.30. Join her if you are in the neighbourhood.

will be screened at Paris International Animation Film Festival, Jan 17-21, 2024. Thanks!

is being presented at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York as part of STEIERMARK SCHAU from Nov 13 until January 7, 2024 before travelling on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from January 15 to February 28. The works in the exhibtion are inspired by the atmospheres of exoplanets. I’ve been working with scientists and used their freeze etching images of early life forms to create a science fiction world. Sound by the amazing Stefan Nemeth.

more info here

is part of this great program in Marseille at Videodrome 2 tomorrow, wish I could be there!

On the Road | Painting Road

Thursday 2 novembre 2023 | 20:00 – 21:00

Fuji de Robert Breer | 1973 | États-Unis | 8 min | 16mm
Just in Time de Kirsten Winter | 1999 | Allemagne | 9 min | 35mm
Chronographies de Jean-Michel Bouhours | 1982 | France | 17 min | 16mm
Carte noire de Michaela Grill | 2014 | Autriche | 2 min
Disquiet de SJ Ramir | 2011 | Nouvelle-Zélande | 2 min
Erosion 12 ; a walk de Collectif Los ingravidos | 2019 | Mexique | 8 min
Après le feu de Jacques Perconte | 2010 | France | 7 min

Some of these nomads are also visual artists. The landscapes crossed are transfigured by a pencil line or colored beaches. Robert Breer mischievously underlines Mount Fuji with a black line on the white snow, sometimes completely replacing the landscape with a similar drawing. The bus or train journey becomes a comic strip, a dream, a colorful painting like in Just in Time by Kirsten Winter. At the meeting of painting, photography and cinema, Jean Michel Bouhours juxtaposes and alternates forests, chalets, mountains in black and white and colorful beats. These interventions are made directly on the film stock.

Others, more focused on black and white photography, film strange worlds, lumpy expanses and deep, fascinating and disturbing nights. With Michaela Grill the landscapes sink into the black ink of erasure, with SJ. Ramir the shivers of the grains in suspension tend a veil of solid mist.

And there are the travelers who, searching the pixels of the digital image, evoke blurred, scattered landscapes, from serene spaces, in a process of deconstruction/reconstruction. The intervention takes place at the heart of the image, within its structure.

Los Ingravidos stretches, fragments, multiplies the figures of representation and Jacques Perconte twists them, metamorphoses them and creates gaps, empty spaces inside the filmed surface like holes in the landscape.

is invited to the great Porto/Post/Doc Festival from Nov 17-25. Thanks so much!

will be screened at Other Cinema in San Francisco on Sept 23 in the LOST HIGHWAYS TRAVELOGS program that is framed by an introduction and book launch of Lost Highways, Embodied Travels by Kornelia Boczkowska

is part of Labocine’s Hallucinogénie program streaming in September

Hallucinogénie invites you on a mesmerizing cinematic journey into the realms of the surreal and the transcendent. Inspired by the concept of photogénie put forth by filmmaker Jean Epstein, our program explores how images on screen can become portals to altered states of consciousness, akin to the enchanting effects of hallucinogens. Laura Irvins refers to photogenie as „a brief moment, the way the actor moves his head, the beauty of a face, a flicker of an expression that seems to contain all the meaning in a scene.„

Through a diverse selection, we migrate from the photogenic to the hallucinogenic image. Cinema allows us to not only record but to imagine and project. In this curated attempt, visuals, sounds and narratives intertwine to transport us beyond the boundaries of reality. As we watch and listen, are we experiencing an experimental process? Is this reproduction faithful to what occurred? Does a trip into the inner realms justify the lack of narrative coherence and provide the filmmaker with more of an artistic license?

Through an array of film forms and scientific experiments, we unravel the cinematic mysteries that mesmerize, captivate, and leave us in a trance, much like the transformative power of hallucinogenic experiences themselves.