Clemens von Wedemeyer

November 19 and 20, 2015
 
The film works and installations by Clemens von Wedemeyer, born in Göttingen in 1974, are contemporary in the best sense of the word: insistent and curious, they seek places where the present becomes visible and tangible. At the same time, they conjure up images which reflect on their own origin and a history of visual media. Silberhöhe measures the juxtaposition of a worker's flat and a new development in Halle an der Saale alongside the setting of Michelangelo Antonioni's L'eclisse. Starting from the monastery at Breitenau, the feature-length film Muster alternates between three different time periods and in the process brings to light the historic sediments of the place as well as showing how its design developed in the years 1945, 1970 and 2012.
 
Von Wedemeyer, who in 2006 won the German competition at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, and who has also had work featured at Documenta and various Biennials, is primarily recognized in the field of visual art. But his oeuvre exhibits an intense proximity to the cinema that reaches far beyond mere referrences. His works immerse themselves deeply in film history and thoroughly investigate aesthetic figures of cinema: the cinematic construction of "point of view" in Von Gegenüber enables a cartography of the Münster train station square, while Found Footage is defined by the precise examination of film fragments of foreign cultures, people and places. In Otjesd and Procession, political scenarios are analyzed through long sequence shots.
 
Procession is also part of the tri-part project, The Cast, which represents the most condensed instance of this approach. Images of a sculpture workshop at Cinecittà are interwoven with a found-footage work about statues in movies and about the revolt of extras during the filming of Ben Hur: the reality depicted in this film has its own origin in cinema.
 
With three programs, the Film Museum presents a cross-section of the artist's work for the first time in Austria. Clemens von Wedemeyer, who is currently working on his latest project in Vienna, will be present for all screenings. The series is being organized in the framework of the 2015 Vienna Art Week.