Fokussy: DV heißt Dziga Vertov

Director: Florian Zeyfang    → show biography   ← hide biography

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: 2002

Synopsis: DV MEANS DZIGA VERTOV is the name of three installation works whose commonality lies in their use of two appropriated film excerpts. The relationship between the two clips was examined in three spatial "experiments;" the contrast between different conceptions of "animation" in the sense of an artistic creation of images thereby came into the foreground. In the first version, the clips were presented with self-made projectors, whose "D.I.Y." optics presented a commentary on the use of high tech equipment in art exhibitions and in the creation of images:
"DV MEANS DZIGA VERTOV (DV by no means designates only digital video) demands an installation context, in which, strongly rendering what is displayed inauthentic, by means of overhead projector a level of commentary on the history of animation and in particular on ist effects is established by comparing two appropriated pieces of film. One the one hand, there are scenes from Vertov’s famous Man with a Movie Camera (1929), in which the stop-motion movements of an anthropomorphized camera with tripod legs are cut with those of an imagined, amused audience.
In the installation version, this is juxtaposed with an excerpt of the 'Making of' special effects of the blockbuster Matrix (Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1999): the 360° flights produced by means of digitally compositing images shot by a vast number of interconnected cameras not only update the certainty of Vertov’s appropriation of space, but in the line of tradition alluded to here and in great distance to everyday experience they appear totally anti-realistic. Vertov’s dialectically organized cinema truth was not only replaced by Leacock’s definition of cinéma vérité, the non-manipulated use of the camera; here, the possibility of comparing present-day production standards of the film industry with historical forms of realism is proposed. […] More so than the others, this clip demands an installation context."
(Aus: Clemens Krümmel, "Film and Drawing on a Tape of Florian Zeyfang", in: Fokussy. Florian Zeyfang, Berlin 2004) In a second, completely different construction, both videos were proverbially "crossed over" into each other. Each video was projected from the side onto a corrugated surface at an angle of 45 degrees. Viewed from the side, only one of the videos was visible. From the front, however, both images overlapped perfectly. The DV MEANS DZIGA VERTOV (L.A. nd version) based installation was developed with Lisa Schmidt-Colinet and Alex Schmoeger. The pieces of corrugated material, stacked one behind the other, corresponded in size and shape to the four letters which previously had extended the famous HOLLYWOOD sign in Los Angeles. HOLLYWOOD LAND was originally advertising for a real estate agent. In the third variation, shown in Norwich, England, both videos were "staged". FOKUSSY: DV MEANS DZIGA VERTOV presented the excerpts on a "constructivist" stage, separated in the different media of television and projection: since, isn't the television a "rejection" according to Godard? A further clue was provided by the title: In Vertov's work, Fokussy refers to technical tricks in film, time loops, fades, quick edits and other craftsmanlike editing manipulations. Vertov's contemporary critics accused him of using these trick techniques, and mentioned in particular the film, Man with a Movie Camera. Vertov's defense of his Fokussy are presented along with this critique, as well as the judgements of his films by later historians. For them, the use of Fokussy in this film represents the unveiling of film work as a production of illusion. Verov's practice then corresponds to the demands of the Kinoki movement, begun by him: the battle against (Hollywood) illusionism by means of montage.

Language: English

Tags: Video Installation