Björn Kämmerer
2021
Eine Einstellung für Harun Farocki
Björn Kämmerer, Axel Töpfer
26 TAKES FOR HARUN FAROCKI is a film collage made by former students. One minute per take. This film was shot by Arthur Sumereder, Axel Töpfer, Björn Kämmerer, Christoph Kolar, David Pujadas Bosch, Franziska Pflaum, Georg Tiller, Jessyca R. Hauser, Johann Lurf, Josephine Ahnelt, Karo Riha, Mina Lunzer, Michael Poetschko, Monika Rabofsky, Mrova, Nathalie Koger, Patrick Schabus, Peter Muzak, Selma Doborac, and Thomas Lehner.
Eine Einstellung für Harun Farocki
TEAL
Björn Kämmerer
When it comes to cinema, a mirror is rarely just a mirror. As one of the medium´s most ubiquitous and expressive symbolic objects, mirrors have long represented something greater than themselves — usually, when looked upon, some otherwise internalized or unsavory facet of a person´s psyche. With TEAL, Björn Kämmerer strips the mirror of its metaphoric trappings and, in the process, restores a bit of its practical magic.
TEAL
Escalator
Björn Kämmerer
By processing a handful of shots of casually acquired black and white film material, Kämmere has a boy incessantly climb and descend the stairs of a house. Dressed in a ite and overalls he seems to be precocious engineer of a machine which compels him to his "escalation" Thomas Korschil
Escalator
Gyre
Björn Kämmerer
Luminous white, diamond-shaped forms glide from right to left across a jet-black plane in Cinemascope format. Minimal variations in their movement can be seen. The screen gradually lightens, and a roughly hewn wooden structure becomes visible. The light-colored rectangles turn out to be window openings of a log cabin with luminous white interior walls which is swiftly rotating on its axis. Subtle changes in the light and the camera´s distance and angle transform this presumably abstract animation into a concrete setup for a filmic and architectural experiment.
Gyre
Untitled
Björn Kämmerer
Alternating the individual slats of a set of Venetian blinds, Björn Kämmerer’s Untitled creates a mysterious cadence as it directs attention to the individual shapes and shadows of the shades, creating a vibrating, animated screen with visual music cues.
Untitled
Torque
Björn Kämmerer
With Torque Björn Kämmerer continues his recent cinematic investigations into the intersection of abstraction and representation, geometry and motion. For Torque, Kämmerer has left domestic architecture behind, taking the camera out of doors to shoot on location. The film consists of a single continuous tracking shot across a series of converging railway tracks. The cinemascope image is subtly modulated by the gradual upward tilt of the camera slowly revealing a further extension of track. This double motion along two different trajectories originating from two separate axis creates a visual and perceptual tension between our experience of renaissance perspective, the expanding depth of field, and the two dimensional plane of the surface on which the image is projected, where the tracks can also be read as abstract shifting diagonal lines.
Torque
Aim
Björn Kämmerer, Karoline Meiberger
Western-found footage, manipulated to the point of being unable to convey a plot: an armed robbery is prevented through the camera, which brings one figure into a grotesque conflict. The armed confrontation gets stuck in a pounding staccato, while the public - although enbedded in the narration - remains disinformed.
Aim
Sicherheitsalarm
Björn Kämmerer, Karoline Meiberger
A disaster film. Danger is omnipresent, but vague and concentrated on its verbal invocation. From a total of 417 minutes of material from a seven-part science fiction production, Björn Kämmerer and Karoline Meiberger have distilled the quintessence of the command structure. Like in a piece of concrete music, appellative signal words (« General », « Sir! », « Commander! ») accelerate, culminating in the coda: « Catastrophe! ». New territory of retroactive science fiction: the directors' cut. »
Sicherheitsalarm
Trigger
Björn Kämmerer
A black screen with a reticle in its centre, vaguely reminiscent of Ego-Shooter games. Then figures from shooting galleries make fleeting appearances, lasting just fractions of a second, pistol in hand, standing or kneeling. A conglomeration of stereotypes from American gangster movies. The TRIGGER in its double meaning, as a trigger for both weapons and cameras. From 150 so-called “training targets” Björn Kämmerer made a selection for his latest film, filmed these on 35mm and with the aid of overexposure assembled them to a cinematic stroboscope. That makes a bang, even without sound!
Trigger
