Still /(c) Karin Pliem „L’infinito della natura“ 2018
– 17:00 / 18:00 guided garden tour (illuminated area)
– 18:30 Literature with Irmi Horn
Artists’s Short cuts and documentations:
– 19:00 Karin Pliem, „L’INFINITO DELLA NATURA“, A 2017, 8 min 10 sec. First presentation in Graz & ARTIST TALK
– 19:30 „RECHNITZ (DER WÜRGEENGEL)“ after Elfriede Jelinek by Christoph Kolar, A 2014, 42 min
– 20:30 “AN EINEM SONNTAG“, Peter Brandstätter/Norbert Prettenthaler, A 2018, 7 min.
– 20:45 “SINKING HELP“, Veronika Klammer, A 2018, 30 sec.
– 21:00 „BORDER RUNNING“, Igor F. Petković, A 2018, 23 min 5 sec
Karin Pliem, „L’infinito della natura“ (Animationsfilm, 2018. Musik: Klemens Pliem, Armin Pokorn) – at the first time in Graz – and artist talk.
Karin Pliem: L’infinito della natura
An animated film (dvd), 2018, 8‘05‘‘. Music: Klemens Pliem, Armin Pokorn
The film starts with a sketch as a background for one of my paintings, the colonnade of Monreale in Sicily – an architectural work that is characterised by an amalgamation of a variety of cultural influences. In this frame plants that were ‘cut out’ from about 20 painted pictures are displayed. They move across and through the frame and try to find their place. Then a sculpture emerges from the background, a reclining giantess, who marks the gate to the underworld, according to the concept of the mannerist Garden of Bomarzo, in Umbria, Italy, and represents the importance of rest, of creative breaks in-between rational and bustling activities at the same time. Here the sleep of reason does not, as later in Goya’s works, produce monsters of stupidity and violence, but instead, sleep gives birth to new ideas, puts our outer sense of time back into perspective, and creates a potential for knowledge. This is one of the reasons why surrealist artists like Salvador Dali rediscovered this sculpture garden after it had fallen into a deep slumber of 400 years. Subsequently, this figure withdraws, to give way to other tones—those of a mechanical and technical thought, the building of frontiers and the fear of the ‘strange’, the narrowing of our awareness and knowledge. After a cut of music and images there is darkness, where from vegetation cumulative again arises …
The title ‘l’infinito della natura’ refers back to a work of Friedrich Engels, the ‘Dialectics of Nature’, which states: ‘we by no means rule over nature […] we belong to nature, and exist in its midst. […] Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature…’.
In this sense I believe that humans are part of nature, of the universe, and it is in our own interest not to be so arrogant as to detach ourselves from it in order to rule as super beings. I would like to give an impetus for homo sapiens to think about their place in the world and their responsibility for it.
The best way for me to achieve this is by painting, but also by using animated images in the form of video. Here the images can be connected with movement and sounds. So far, I have been using a form of modern jazz that is primarily improvised and recorded live and directly in front of the still ‘silent’ videos. Thus, the soundtrack is not the affirmative interpretation of the visual action, but an original, re-active artistic articulation that runs parallel to the painterly work.*
Karin Pliem
www.karinpliem.at
* “Klemens Pliem, an agile, Coltrane-inspired performer, was soon swerving through long double-tempo flights, all the more imposingly on an account of In Your Own Sweet Way that had similarly begun in a discreetly melodious murmur.” John Fordham, The Guardian. www.klemenspliem.bplaced.net
„Rechnitz (der Würgeengel)“ a film by Christoph Kolar / founded at Elfriede Jelinek’s text, 2014 ca. 42 min Cast: Martin Bermoser und Susanne Wuest