Keren Cytter
16 Nov 2007 - 20 Jan 2008
Keren Cytter
The Victim
16.11.07–20.01.08
Opening: November 15, 2007–7.00 p.m.
With the exhibition, The Victim, the MUMOK is presenting a selection from the filmic oeuvre and drawings of the artist Keren Cytter who was born in 1977 in Tel Aviv and who won the prestigious ‘Bâloise Art Prize’ at last year’s Art Basel.
Cytter, who as author also writes the screenplays for her films, breaks with the familiar forms of dialogue and plot. She works with surprising edits and asynchronous new montages of sentences and images. In addition she repeats image and sound sequences with slight variations. This undermines the unity of place, time and scenario and directs the attention to the relationship between language and behaviour.
In The Victim five nameless people meet at dinner. How they are related and their personal relationships are revealed as the conversations progress. At the centre of events is a woman who has to choose between her lover and her son, both played by the same actor. The rhythmic interlocking of images and language leads to recriminations which end in the suicide of the accused – a literal bombshell. The screenplay, as well as the camera and microphone, appear in the image sequences and thematise in the filmic events the medium of film itself. The film is conceived as a loop in which the beginning and the end of the action relate to one another and the actors are imprisoned in the endless repetitions.
In the filmic installation, Dreamtalk, the permeation of lived reality with media reality is being reflected. The storyline takes place in the private surroundings of a small bachelor apartment and quotes the stereotypical modes of thought and expression that are communicated by and in reality soaps. The film does not only concern the influence of the media on self-perception but also carries the confusion of personal feelings and their representation in the media to extremes. Consequently, for the actors their ‘real’ reality is that of television, and without its flickering their own existence is also extinguished.
The Victim
16.11.07–20.01.08
Opening: November 15, 2007–7.00 p.m.
With the exhibition, The Victim, the MUMOK is presenting a selection from the filmic oeuvre and drawings of the artist Keren Cytter who was born in 1977 in Tel Aviv and who won the prestigious ‘Bâloise Art Prize’ at last year’s Art Basel.
Cytter, who as author also writes the screenplays for her films, breaks with the familiar forms of dialogue and plot. She works with surprising edits and asynchronous new montages of sentences and images. In addition she repeats image and sound sequences with slight variations. This undermines the unity of place, time and scenario and directs the attention to the relationship between language and behaviour.
In The Victim five nameless people meet at dinner. How they are related and their personal relationships are revealed as the conversations progress. At the centre of events is a woman who has to choose between her lover and her son, both played by the same actor. The rhythmic interlocking of images and language leads to recriminations which end in the suicide of the accused – a literal bombshell. The screenplay, as well as the camera and microphone, appear in the image sequences and thematise in the filmic events the medium of film itself. The film is conceived as a loop in which the beginning and the end of the action relate to one another and the actors are imprisoned in the endless repetitions.
In the filmic installation, Dreamtalk, the permeation of lived reality with media reality is being reflected. The storyline takes place in the private surroundings of a small bachelor apartment and quotes the stereotypical modes of thought and expression that are communicated by and in reality soaps. The film does not only concern the influence of the media on self-perception but also carries the confusion of personal feelings and their representation in the media to extremes. Consequently, for the actors their ‘real’ reality is that of television, and without its flickering their own existence is also extinguished.