Director: Florian Zeyfang
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Biography: Florian Zeyfang born 1965 in Stuttgart, Germany. 1987 to 1993 at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin. 1997/8 at the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York, currently Professor for Video/Installation at the Art Academy in Umeå, Sweden. In his texts, videos and installation work, the Berlin based artist, videomaker and writer Florian Zeyfang critically looks at the connotations of a globalized world of media signs and at the consequences for the society and the individual, taking into account historic aspects of both art and political movements. His projects are conceived within different forms of the moving image: film, video, slide projection, animation. Spacious installations as well as slide series ("slow films") form an important part of his discussion of “time-based media.” Florian Zeyfang regularly takes part in exhibitions nationally and abroad, recently in Kunstverein Köln, at A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Artists Space, New York; at the 2nd Tirana Biennale, at ICA Moscow, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Kunstverein Hannover, at the 6th Werkleitz Biennale in Halle and at the KW Berlin. Furthermore, the artist curates projects for institutions like CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warschau, sala rekalde in Bilbao, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, the 8th Havanna Biennale, the foto festival in Houston, in the Museum for Applied Arts Wien, in the MAK Schindlerhaus in Los Angeles and the Swiss Institute in New York. Currently, Florian Zeyfang works on exhibition projects ranging between Art and experimental film (“Poor Man´s Expression”, Berlin 2006; “1,2,3 Avant-Gardes”, Warschau/Stuttgart/Bilbao 2006-2008).
Lisa Schmidt-Colinet and Alexander Schmoeger are architects and live in Vienna. Since 2001 Schmidt-Colinet/Schmoeger and Florian Zeyfang have collaborated on exhibitions and projects. Together with Eugenio Valdés Figueroa they published “Pabellón Cuba,” an extensive reader on art, architecture, and film in Cuba.
Country: Germany
Year: 2003
Synopsis: In “Quote Fassbinder Unquote”, text sequences of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, taken from the context of his television series “Berlin Alexanderplatz”, which was filmed in monumental faithfulness to the original, are spoken by a female voice. The text sequences relate in a not unambiguously illustrating way to tracings of the two most important characters, Franz Biberkopf and Reinhold. One can discern differences in look but not in expression in the drawings; in this case the type of drawing is closer than usual to a storyboard, the systematically structured sequence of picture compositions to be constructed for a scene, created prior to the production of the film. Here, however, we are dealing with a subsequent storyboard that initially consists only of long-shots and later increasingly abstract sign structures, as well as b/w set design photos and set sketches by Harry Baer and Fassbinder. Towards the end, we see the drawing-like animated film image of a spider within the line structure of its web.
The following quote describes a pure state of bliss between two people – and in the interplay with the images it soon seems as if this analytical description could be transferred to the images of the drawn film as the sketch of a Utopian ideal state between concretion and abstraction: “What goes on between Franz and Reinhold by no means concerns a sexual relation between two people of the same sex; no: it is no more and no less than pure love, unendangered by anything social. That is: this is how it ought to be. But since, of course, both of them are social creatures, they’re incapable of understanding this love, accepting it. They cannot simply submit to being rich and made happy by a kind of love that is, in any event, extremely rare among human beings (...) a love which does not lead to visible results, a love that cannot be mediated, cannot be exploited, and therefore, cannot be made useful. (...)”
(From: Clemens Krümmel, "Film and Drawing on a Tape of Florian Zeyfang", in: Fokussy. Florian Zeyfang, Berlin 2004)
Language: German, English