Paris, 5.1.2014 Dominique Müller 12 Rue Petit F-75019 Paris +33 (0)6 60 50 12 94 in the Woods Bändlistrasse 30 CH-8064 Zürich +41(0)76 562 92 62 dominique@videonoir.ch www.enterthewoods.com DoCumentation Dominique Müller (English; all texts translated from German) Still from video installation Rising Birds #30 Café des Rêves - a video exhibition Helmhaus Zurich 29.4.-19.7.11 1
Dominique Müller *29.4.80, Aarau, Switzerland Studied documentary film in the video department of the University of Lucerne (Design & Fine Arts). For his education and work he spent longer periods of time in Cape Town, Paris, Berlin and Sydney. 2012 he completed a Master of Fine Arts in the field of contemporary arts practice at the University of Berne in Switzerland. Dominique Müller works in a studio called the Woods in Zurich and is represented by the gallery SCHAU ORT. Christiane Büntgen, Zurich. education 2010-2012 Berne University of the Arts (Master of Fine Arts) 2003-2007 Lucerne Unuversity of Applied Sciences and Arts (Graduation in Video) Awards and Grants 2012 Aargauer Kuratorium studio residency (2013) at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris 2012 ZKB art award nominee 2011 Work stipend awarded by Aargauer Kunsthaus and Aargauer Kuratorium 2010 Aargauer Kuratorium grant for Rising Birds 2008 Takt9, studio residency of the Zurich University of the Arts und Migros Pensionskasse 2008 Berlinale Talent Campus 2007 Zurich Filmfestival Master Class with Oliver Stone 2007 Mark Zeugin Award for All about Daniel 2007 Funding of All about Daniel by Aargauer Kuratorium, Filmbüro, Bremen and Konrad Wolf Potsdam- Babelsberg Film and Television University (HFF) 2
Exhibitions and Festivals (Selection) 2013 Auswahl 13 Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau, Switzerland Cantonale Berne Jura Kunstmuseum Langenthal, Switzerland Le Cercle Radialsystem V, Berlin, Germany Cutlog Paris, France Time is on my Side Rote Fabrik, Zurich, Switzerland 2012 Cantonale Berne Jura CentrePasqArt Kunsthaus Biel, Switzerland Cantonale Berne Jura Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland Yesterday is another country Kunst 12; ZKB solo-booth, Zurich, Switzerland 12 noon CentrePasquArt Kunsthaus Biel, Switzerland Cut - SCHAU PLATZ #2 SCHAU ORT. Christiane Büntgen, Zurich, Switzerland La Terra vista dalla Luna Zimmermannhaus Gallery, Brugg, Switzerland Berlin Transit Jewish Museum Berlin, Germany 2011 Café des Rêves a video exhibition Helmhaus, Zurich, Switzerland 13th Ed. Videoex, International Experimental Film Festival, Zurich, Switzerland EXPERIMENTA, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil Auswahl 11 Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland Cantonale Berne Jura Stadtgalerie, Berne, Switzerland Black Vogue Loge, Berlin, Germany 2010 Auswahl 10 Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland Superlative! Das superste Konzert ever! Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Germany 56th Belgrade Documentary Film Festival, Belgrad, Serbia 2009 ARBEIT. Sinn und Sorge Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden, Germany Pier Paolo Pasolini - Who is me! Strauhof, Zurich; Centre Dürrenmatt, Neuchâtel; Literaturhaus, Berlin, Switzerland and Germany 2008 41. Hof International Film Festival, Germany 24. Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Germany 43. Solothurn Film Festival, Switzerland Ersichtlich Marion Scharmann Gallery, Cologne, Germany 2007 Takt9, Zurich, Switzerland Illustrative, Berlin, Germany 2006 42. Solothurn Film Festival, Switzerland 20. Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Stuttgart, Germany Festival Multistandard Paris - Berlin, Paris, France P.P.P. Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany 3
Time is on my Side 5 channel Video installation, 2013, 8 min http://vimeo.com/66148309 After Frederick Winslow Taylor from Principles of Scientific Management : 1) Find, say, 10 or 15 different men (preferably in as many separate establishments and different parts of the country) who are especially skillful in doing the particular work to be analyzed. 2) Study the exact series of elementary operations or motions which each of these men uses in doing the work which is being investigated, as well as the implements each man uses. 3) Study with a stop-watch the time required to make each of these elementary movements and then select the quickest way of doing each element of work. 4) Eliminate all false movements, slow movements, and useless movements. 5) After doing away with all unnecessary movements, collect into one series the quickest and best movements as well as the best implements. The best method becomes standard. Auswahl 13 Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau 7.12.13-5.1.14 4
Continuation of Time is on my Side The video installation, consisting of five monitors facing each other in a circle, shows a group dialog between artificial people from different motion pictures. In the original movies they are mostly termed as androids. An android is a machine in human guise. It tries to seem human in external appearance as well as behavior, more so than a normal robot. A cyborg, being the coalescence of man and machine, aims to expand mere human skills. The android, on the other hand, is a man or woman that was created completely artificially. It tends to restrain its infinite technological capabilities, so as not to differ noticeably from mankind. Created by man, the humanoid robot is nevertheless treated as an object and used as a servant. It is frequently expected to preform tasks that are impossible, dangerous or just too menial for humans. The purpose of an automatic unit is to accomplish certain activities reliably and accurately within an optimal time frame (according to standards) meaning: without human failure, fatigue, or vanity. A machine is infallible, but also replaceable. In the movies, human actors represent androids, because, after all, these machines would look just like a normal human being from the outside. An actor plays a machine, which sees its primary mission in seeming to be human. Inside, the android remains a technical automaton, and it is not accepted as a human individual. The actors, in their role as an android, are reminiscent of a high-performance society, in which humankind takes on mechanical tendencies in its desire for perfection. Despite all achievements, approval and appreciation decline. The video installation appropriates actions and statements from androids as presented in approximately 100 different movies. Without taking the stories of the single motion pictures into account, the material has been disengaged from its original context. What is left, are those questions and conflicts that separate man from machine. The film fragments were assembled into new dialogs on several channels. Sporadically, humans that create machines also appear, or those that just pretend to be a robot. The installation consists of five television sets that were removed from their casing and placed in a circle facing each other. The technical insides are in plain view and bestow unto the protagonists a physical as well as an exposed body. As if they were five beings come together just for this purpose, the mechanical creatures on screen comment on their conflicts with trying to be human. Confronted with emotions (such as love, hate, affection, contempt, joy, and sorrow), morality and decency, as well as life and death, the machines try to comprehend these human traits. Everything seems to be connected to the factor of time. But what is time? Time is what the mechanics of clockwork indicate or what a human perceives as memories between being born and dying. For a machine, though, time has no real meaning. It is everlasting. A robot cannot live nor die. All that makes a human being vulnerable is incompatible with the programming and logic mechanisms of a machine. Even if the android seems to approach human personhood step by step, it nevertheless fails in the end, being unable to perceive time as humans do because of its own organic immortality. Dominique Müller 5
Untitled (Hulk) & 1 channel Video installation, 2012, 12 Min & Yesterday is another country 2 channel Video installation, 2012, 9 Min http://vimeo.com/72206616 & http://vimeo.com/72206615 12 noon CentrePasquArt Kunsthaus Biel 23/24.6.12 «A young man and woman prepare for a boxing match. Their green boxing gloves are merchandising products and children s toys: they are the fists of The Incredible Hulk, a comic figure from the 1960 s. The anti-hero Hulk is the alter ego of introverted nuclear scientist Dr. Robert Bruce Banner. After having survived an atomic accident, the fearful and over-cautious physicist transforms periodically into a Frankenstein-like monster. The metamorphosis of the lanky genius into a not too bright but invincible creature is triggered by his uncontrollable inner fury and results in the green-skinned, overly muscled Hulk, whose destructiveness knows no bounds. The loss of Dr. Banner s identity is reminiscent of the doppelgänger theme in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 6
Continuation of the two Installations In the two-channel video installation Yesterday is another country the two genders face each other, ready for battle. But even while conducting their very first blow, they both fall into a trance-like state; from melancholia to self-abandonment. The video consists of countless recordings of the same motion sequence of boxing into the air until both protagonists are absolutely exhausted. All actions, from the first blow up to the shortly following collapse, were super-imposed and temporally distorted. The outlines of the protagonists dissolve, and then coagulate to reform into new shapes of a multi-jointed body from different time frames. An initially uncontrolled bashing about configures into heroic poses and demonstrations of might, then disintegrates into the sensuous emotional states of a monstrous body. The overlying formations rupture the linearity of a recorded chronology and mold into different symbols, such as the recognition of the multi-armed Kali (goddess of destruction), to sculptures known from museums, or the portrayal of familiar pop-culture super heroes. The green fists become akin to a universe of planets that insistently circle a center, but also collide recklessly or plunge into their point of attraction. Visual overlays and chronological distortions generate a structure of subtle impulses, which evaporate in the moment of their discovery. The rather pointless routine and self-exhaustion leads to a trance-like image of colors and shapes. The video installation is reminiscent of the sensation of helplessness when one discovers a certain possibility that just cannot be used efficiently; sinking instead into a feeling of melancholia, which, in turn, can contain its own potential.» Christiane Büntgen, Galeristin Yesterday is an other country ZKB solo-booth 8.11.12 11.11.12 7
Berlin Transit Video installation, 3 x 24 m, 2012, LOOP 20 Min http://vimeo.com/65822931 Fragments stemming from photo and film archives blend into an oscillating memory cloud of Berlin in the 1920s. Fleeting visual and auditory constructions glide through the exhibition space along 24 meters of wall. A work in cooperation with Fabian Wegmüller (Compositing), Samuel Gfeller (Sound Design), and Detlef Weitz (Scenography), commissioned by the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Berlin Transit Jewish Museum Berlin 22.3.-15.7.2012 «How to present a place that lives mostly from and of imagination? A place, which, in the belief of many Jews from the eastern parts of Europe, was associated with hopes for a better life in the West; a place, which, for the majority of Berlin s inhabitants during the first two decades of the 20th century, embodied the downside of a metropolis; a place, which has meanwhile been nostalgically glorified and, under the label of the Old Jewish Quarter, is used today as an effective marketing strategy for the advertisement of a multicultural city-history of Berlin? Our current vision of the life of East-European Jewish Migrants in Berlin s Scheunenviertel in the 1920s mainly derives from two historic records: On the one hand, it is affected by the descriptions found in coeval, partly auto-biographic, novels. The best known ones are Alfred Döblin s masterpiece Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), Sammy Gronemann s Tohuwabohu (1920), and the memoires of the Galician actor Alexander Granach in Da geht ein Mensch. Apart from these subjective and fictional publications, it is on the other hand especially the historic photographs of the Scheunenviertel that notably influence our idea of this part of town. By looking at these, it appears to us that we might gain an objective impression of the everyday life of the East-European Jewish Migrants living there. [...]» From the exhibition catalog by Anne-Christin Saß 8
Rising Birds #55 Charcoal drawing on Film still, 2012, 108 x 160 cm Stills printed in large scale from 8mm film covered with charcoal crayon until the picture s information sinks underneath the black dust. Through the repeated drawing-over, its surface gains a slightly metallic look. The image is slightly bent and reflects the incoming light. While some parts seem as if they were etched by acid, others appear as ghostly craters in optical bulges. «What emerges in the end, though, is not the image of a recollection engraved into memory, but a darkened surface that is reminiscent of an erased entry as described by Sigmund Freud in his A Note upon the Mystic Writing Pad : even if the fixed script is cleared away to make room for new writing, there still remain marks that are due to the previously written.» Ulrich Loock, critic CUT Gallery SCHAU ORT. Christiane Büntgen, Zurich 29.4.-2.6.2012 9
Continuation of Rising Birds #55 «Photography as the bearer of memory plays a central role in the works of Dominique Müller. Above all it is the album of family photographs, which is often confronted with high expectations to meet this requirement. Can it not but fail this expectancy? Memory is, after all, not a frozen image or a fixed moment in time, but a process in a constant state of flux. Memories evolve together with the person trying to preserve these. Nevertheless the desire remains to capture a static picture of the past, which can display a piece of bygone reality or which can even assist in keeping it alive in the present of the one remembering. And yet, such documents are often strangely detached from the real moments of experience, cut out of a chronological course of events and for this reason unreal. A memory always lies in the past. Does the possibility to keep it up-to-date even exist? Dominique Müller s photographs and charcoal drawings broach the issue of these questions. They investigate the discrepancy of photography as the bearer of memory, in that the motifs are actually film stills and thus extracted from a time flow. The conscious selection of the moment, the cut or the halting of movement illustrates the dynamics inherent in our process of memory. The images, which resemble a vague outline or (white) blotch more than a tangible form, trigger different moments of remembrance in each observer. At the same time, they question the expectations we have of photography as depiction of memory and the connected possibility of transmitting it to following generations.» Esther Spycher, curator «Dense black planes with a surface of fine charcoal-dust are presented by Dominique Müller. He has applied many layers of charcoal to densify - to black out - a picture. It lies underneath the color, showing its contours, akin to a dark shadow in an even darker night: a team of horses and carriage seen from above, from the coach. It is an image stemming from his own past, from his family history, recorded on 8mm film. Dominique Müller has extracted single frames and printed them in the analog way, then reworked them with charcoal. By means of this inversion, he achieves additional value. On the one hand, Müller reverses the principle of the medium by transforming images whose appearance is dependent on the quality of light into their opposite. Not immaterial light brings forth the motive, but charcoal, a material burned up by light (fire), is used to blacken and obscure the image. In this way, the history of the family is put through and this is the other point being made here a correction, because it is overdrawn. Not what we see in the light but, quite the opposite, what we see in the dark what we do not see is what attracts our attention.» Melanie Franke, art historian 10
Rising Birds #30 Video installation, 2011, Loop 5 min http://vimeo.com/72659922 Villa Adele, Via Concezione 47, Laigueglia, Italia. Remembering is a fluid state. Memory grows, gets displaced, bursts and blossoms, fades or disappears. In opposition to this, the attempt is made to capture beautiful moments on photos and family films for eternity. In this manner, memories can be passed on from generation to generation unadulterated. Surrounding these frozen views and image fragments the memory lives on until also this testimony disintegrates in its own materiality. Café des Rêves - a video exhibition Helmhaus Zurich 29.4.-19.7.11 «Fragments of old 8mm films and a piece of wallpaper featuring baroque ornaments are the elements that form Dominique Müller s installation. All of the materials originate from his family and were found in a house of theirs that has been vacant for 40 years and is situated by the sea on the Italian Riviera, separated from the beach by a railway line. A family of six once inhabited this villa and these people surface in the film projection, appearing and vanishing. It is not a narration of a family history, instead Dominique Müller creates, through collagelike combinations of personal images and sequences, an atmosphere in which the biographical manifests itself as a mood. In most cases the sound develops an autonomous quality from the images, bleeds into them and gives their contents an own acoustic space. It is not about truth or a testimony but rather about essential questions to do with the meaning of the past within the present. Family fates are never in the past, they still have an influence on reality and create their own image worlds. How do images of the past affect the present? What do we remember from the past when we look back? These are essential questions dealing with the archetypes of life, Dominique Müller poses them through his film projection.» Melanie Franke, art historian 11
Continuation of Rising Birds #30 «Time, that is us, we are simultaneously in all times» (a quote by Theo Angelopoulos) «[...] In parts, the video also contains nostalgically poetic elements, when the sequence of images takes on a slower rhythm, spots of the film s old age dance flickeringly across the wallpaper, or when two horses stride out of the picture in a fluid motion, as if pulled along by an invisible current of water they disappear into nothing, dissolve into the whiteness of the image, just like memories withdraw themselves from any tangibility and are once again submerged. This logic of non-linear cuts frees the viewer from her habitual thought process, in which memories are used solely for everyday actions. Another type of memory is brought to life through the materiality of the images and emerges from the viewer s subconscious, stimulating new and creative associations. As Marcel Proust once remarked, memories are not comprehensible through intellect, but they are present/inherent within certain objects and can be activated by means of a sensual interaction with these. Just as with Rising Birds #30.» Stefanie Little, art historian «I thought of a kind of short circuit of memory-images, items of remembrance and destruction: as strongly as memory interacts with the here and now (Benjamin s dialectical image, Aby Warburg s afterlife, Freud s afterwardsness ), it always contains the index of the past. As alive as it may be its subject-matter still lies forever in an unreachable distance ( as near as it may seem ). The destruction, on the other hand, produces presence. It seems to me as if even the filmed (meaning: lying in the past) destruction brings forth presence for whoever views the film. This presence implies: now that the image is being burned, now that it cannot be, can never again be looked at, something momentary, something contemporary breaks into the persistence of a visually captured memory. While the picture bestowed something permanent on the memory that was also somewhat worn out, the destruction of this picture throws upon its continuation a moment of complete actualization and a definitive end. Remembering the experience of my visit at the museum, I would like to say that the spectacular destruction of the image (burning) frees the memory from its lasting enclosure and updates it together with the knowledge that this picture of the past will from now on not be available anymore. The Now of the memory in the exact moment when its evidence is forever lost. It is somewhat like a dying person, of whom it is said, that in the moment of death his or her whole preceding life passes before their eyes one final time.» Ulrich Loock, critic «I would like to place my comment at the instant when my memory steps out of its intimate condition as a personal journal or dream-diary and is now open to the public in the form of an artwork. Ulrich Loock points out the social moment of the personal. When society is already present in the words and laws of a first verbalization, how much more will it govern the public perception of an artwork? I can think of my memory as an artwork only akin to the authority of the lyrical I, as used in the biographical sphere. This always raises the question of who is speaking as this I. My memory is not my memory anymore. Presumably, this is always about an irretrievable loss and simultaneously about a new positioning: a construction of immediacy on stage that has the potential to allow each person of the audience his or her own specific projections. This I is a plural one. Only because we all have the impression to know such a house near the railroad tracks are we willing to accept this invitation to a dance of association. At best, my memories will intertwine with my memories.» Hans Rudolf Reust, critic 12
Rising Birds #40.1 - #48.1 C-Print, Fotoserie, 2011, 111,7 x 79 cm Auswahl 11 Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau 3.12.11-8.1.12 «What interests me about Rising Birds #40.1-#48.1, about the horse-bodies alternately gliding into and through each other, is that it is an image of condensed time. I remember that, while standing in front of the large-scale prints, the grain of the images and signs of self-identity of seemingly several horse-bodies give enough indications of a filmic whirring or rattling, which streams along just behind the images, which generates them, makes them possible. The mutated impossible body that is thus created, this monstrous corporeality is one, which settles itself between the frozen single frames of the camera, within the intervening or, better yet, the adjoining spaces of a linear chronology. That this allegory of time condensation does not present itself in one but in many versions, that it is at one time one condensed body, that is created, then again two-and-a-half or, after all, one as seen from three positions in in time, that, I think, is crucial. Because this implies for me that this condensation of the cinematically memorized ride in a carriage can be taken over and over and hence in different ways respectively must be taken. The condensed image strategy is precisely not re/produced as the one and only correct memory picture. But on the contrary: once put into motion, there trails behind it a whole sequence, a whole variety of memory pictures.» Tim Zulauf, artist 13
Continuation of Rising Birds #40.1-#48.1 «Suddenly, I remembered two videos by Dominque that I saw a few years ago and that deeply impressed me for similar reasons as paradoxical, impenetrable documentations: they were very personal; so personal, in fact, that I felt somewhat awkward in watching them. And now here, on these black pictures, something filmic suddenly begins to take up space. You see a carriage driving away. Or does it only appear abruptly out of the dark environment before vanishing into the background again? [...] All of a sudden I was not really sure anymore, if they are / were photographs or cinematic installations. Maybe both. I forgot. Or better yet: I don t really remember anymore. My memory is bad and it is getting worse. But picture memory stays, you internalize it, assimilate it into your own experiences, generously blend several different historical sources, individual, as well as collective ones. Dominque s works have the quality to attach themselves onto the carousel of memories, like vehicles of transportation. They seem to make the remembrance of memory possible. Even if, in their core, they probably allude to the very personal family history of a young Swiss artist, they still exude, especially because of their unabashed handling of the personal, something remarkable, which some might perceive to be sentimental, but which is, at the same time, in its directness also universal.» Eva Meyer-Hermann, curator «Genetic memory. The image errs! But so I remember: I was in a state of deep dilemma. An important journey awaited but the horse was missing, the horse! In my memory it was only one horse that was missing. Also, they were colored bodies, on which my view was directed during the following journey, chromosomes. And this too I remember: a slow disappearance and fading away of the image of the lung-addicted artistic rider, who, in my childhood, whispered things unintelligible to me into the animal s nostrils, of which I had to think involuntarily during the journey, when the horses were huffing and puffing. Eerie, how altering these images: Iron Gustav, stay iron, don t let yourself be lead astray by this false ringing of the nighttime bell, or you will have to endure the same fate as the country doctor, whose horse seemed to have vanished all of a sudden, when he was called to a patient s side and couldn t help but change his plans.» Jürgen Willinghöfer, author «The mooncalf? The man in the moon? O Terra. Watercolors by Thomas Schütte. Totally blue planet. We, however, are situated, as Pier Paolo Pasolini remarks in the opening credits of his film La Terra vista dalla Luna, on earth. This planet is not only crazy, it is uncanny. Uncanny, writes Sigmund Freud, is when the difference between the living and the dead evaporates. Others can t get over the fact that the intimacy of home is lost. Artists, poets, out of place from the start, converse with Earth s uncanniness. Trembler avec le tremblement de la terre. Édouard Glissant. Embrace the world. Distance and nearness inseparable, incompatible, nearness out of the distance. The moon is Earth. It is a wicked deception, which suggests Earth to have lost itself within an impenetrable discourse of images, trademarks, simulacrums this is only true, when the unique appearance of a distance, as near it may seem, has become unbearable.» Exhibition text for La Terra vista dalla Luna by Ulrich Loock, critic 14
Rising Birds #39 c-print, 2011, a4 Auswahl 11 Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau 3.12.11-8.1.12 «Dominique Müller composes atmospheric presentations that look back on a mysterious past. The title Rising Birds includes a number of works that stage either in the form of a film, installation or photographic work a fragmented memory within the exhibition space. Rising Birds #30 is a composition of old films which the artist found from his family. The film is projected onto an old fashioned tapestry and is combined with the four photographic works Rising Birds #40.1, #44.1, #46.1 and #48.1 which each were created through the layering or multiple exposure of a scene from the movie featuring a two horse carrier. The four images appear through the variation and blurring like multiple memory experiments that were captured photographically, at the same time something dreamlike and unreal manifests itself in them. A few rooms further on in the exhibition the inconspicuous photo Rising Birds #39 appears and flashes up as it were like a personal memory but also remains hard to categorise. As well as the poetic force, the installation and the precise arrangement of the works also won the Aargauer judging panel of curatorship over. The installation goes far beyond a formal decision and achieves to translate the central message of the exhibited artwork into the dramaturgy of an exhibition.» Judging panel report 2011, Oliver Kielmayer 15
TIME PRESSURE Music video, 2011, 3 min «In a performance a correspondence between space and time should be realized so that the music sounds as it looks.» Excerpt from the score AS SLOW AS POSSIBLE (ASLSP) by John Cage. Collaborative work with Anabel Sarabi. 13th Ed. Videoex, experimental film and video festival, Zurich à suivre #18, sound installations & conzert, Berne Superlative! Das superste Konzert ever! Tonhalle Düsseldorf EXPERIMENTA, Curta Cinema 2011, Rio de Janeiro «What does it mean to have a lot of time or little time? These questions can objectively only be answered in relations or in measurement units. To messure one s time we invented instruments for invented units. But how accurate are these units and instruments really? What do they really tell us about experienced time? Video essay inspired by John Cage s ASLSP: As slow as possible - made under time pressure» 13th Ed. Videoex program 16
Black Vogue Video installation, 2007, Loop 21 hs A Vogue magazine is literally erased from the first to the last page with a black marker pen. Beauty ideals and consumer products drown forever in the illustrations of Andree Volkmann. Detlef Weitz was the collaborator for this piece. Cantonale Berne Jura CentrePasquArt, Kunsthaus Biel 09.12.2012 20.01.2013 «Every surface point is touched, every moment conjures up new images and associations just before these then disappear in a closed, black glossy surface. This process takes about 21 hours which equates exactly to the length of the film by Detlef Weitz and Dominique Müller. The film captures this process which makes the magic and dramaturgy created by this permanent alteration of meaning palpable. What remains is an object with a changing character in which the banality of a fashion magazine and the seriousness of an abstract-minimalist artwork fuse reaching a point zero of all fashion magazines and mysterious meaning at the same time.» Dorothée Brill, curator 17
All about Daniel Documentary film, 2007, 30 min It was agreed upon that he had to die. Daniel is the last fan of the forgotten actor Michael Kroecher. After years of sending him fan letters, the admirer receives an invitation from his idol to visit him. From then on he films and photographs him until his death. Together and in front of the camera they stage the death of this old star in order to make the persona Michael Kroecher immortal; a symbiosis between a fan and his star. 41. Hof International Film Festival 24. Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival 43. Solothurn Film Festival 56th Belgrade Documentary Film Festival Talent Campus at the 58. Berlinale Film Festival «All about Daniel tells the story of a fan and his obsession for a forgotten actor. The message is: The star only becomes a star in the face of his fan. And a film only is a film in the face of the viewer. Michale Kroecher who once upon a time acted in films by Werner Herzog, Istvan Szabo and Frederico Fellini, is the androgynous, eccentric center around which the young Daniel Semler circles with his video camera in order to film him right up until his death bed. The director Dominique Müller makes use of this material, thereby getting entangled in a web which is an attractive but also dangerous network of charisma, pose, narcissism and transference.» Aargauer Kuratorium, judging panel report 2007 The film was subsidised by the Swiss federal office (EDI), university for film and television (HFF) Potsdam-Babelsberg, the Aargauer curatorship and the bureau of film Bremen among others. 18
Grandmother s Suitcase Documentary film, 2006, 19 min Among the inherited objects from my grandfather I found yellowed photo albums and mouldy 8mm film. When these images get restored and cleaned, secrets which have been hidden for years resurface. A portrait of an abandoned house by the sea sets the tone of the film, a family history is revealed and childhood memories are narrated from different perspectives. 42. Solothurner Filmtage 20. Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival Multistandard Paris Berlin 2006 19
P. P. P. 12 channel video installation, 2005, Loop 20 min http://vimeo.com/65822935 Installation piece featuring Pasolini s filmic motifs. This work combines various extracts of his film in a parallel and synchronous manner against and with each other. It shows a representative cross-section of his filmic oeuvre. His very own and unique image aesthetics are presented in an appropriate exhibition space. This filmic installation analysis forms a landscape of 12 free floating big projections. Collaborative work with Detlef Weitz. P. P. P. Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich 10.2005-02.2006 «The video installation Pasolini and Death by Dominique Müller and Detlef Weitz is a true gem and a piece of art in its own right but still manages to do justice to Pasolini s filmic oeuvre. On twelve equally sized projection surfaces, conceived as a horizontal filmstrip, an analysis of his cinematic vocabulary unfolds.» Neue Zürcher Zeitung 19.3.09 «For the observer who could experience Pasolini s films as contemporary events, the main point of interest remains to be Pasolini s films themselves. For this purpose, a circular panorama consisting of twelve projections was conceived as the central feature of this exhibition, in which the artistic and thematic emphases of the films are shown. This spectacle conjures up the desire to re-watch some of his films.» Neue Zürcher Zeitung 23.12.05 20