CAMERA TEST
Siegfried Fruhauf, Austria, 16mm > digital, 4 min, 2022 The green leader of the 16mm film is still running, yet the rattling sound is already committed to forward movement. And indeed, it moves forward, but also back again, past hills, fir trees, and apple trees—and at some point, the gaze zooms into the seemingly passing landscape; but will also be forward again. This generates a simultaneously connecting and disturbing stroboscope effect, which generates after-images and allows the landscape to appear continuous despite obvious breaks; at the same time, the interim garish green “flash” offers glaring evidence that here we are dealing with a cinematically constructed journey rather than a “natural” one. Like the soundtrack, which is based on a staccato-style playback of ocean sounds split into stereo channels rather than a linear sound recording, the images are the cinematic synthesis of several camera pans across one and the same landscape, and not the result of a journey from A to B.—Christa Benzer Siegfried Fruhauf (1976). 35+ films since 1998; screenings at venues including Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Media City FIlm Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Image Forum, Venice International Film Festival, Austrian Film Museum, Berlinale, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Centre Pompidou, San Francisco Cinematheque, Yale University, and Sundance Film Festival. Austrian Art Award for Film (2018). Lives in Vienna and Heiligenberg, Austria.
