Along the Bodies

This program with a selection of recent works by Antoinette Zwirchmayr focuses on the relationship between the body and nature in the artist’s analogue films.

Unnamed locations, such as the river landscape in Oceano Mare, the volcano in The Seismic Form, and the meticulously constructed mise-en-scène of Along the Bodies, are part of an idiosyncratic aesthetics in which the interplay of environments, objects, and bodies becomes an ongoing game of revelation and concealment. The artist sets fluid and firm, soft and hard materials—such as skin, water, plants, and stones—into relations with one another, in approximations and encounters that can range from the tenuous to the confrontational. The human form does not appear as an isolated presence, but unfolds in space by means of touching, gestures, and layers. The voice-over to Along the Bodies cites Jean-Luc Nancy: “The unfolding is infinite. The finite body contains the infinite.”

Program

On the Frozen Atlas, 2020, 16 mm, 6 min
Venus Delta, 2016, 16 mm, 4 min
Oceano Mare, 2020, 16 mm, 7 min
The Seismic Form, 2020, 16 mm, 15 min
Along the Bodies, 2022, 35 mm, 24 min

Introduced by Antoinette Zwirchmayr

Along the Bodies is a collaboration between the artist and Klangforum Wien and is being shown for the first time in Austria.

Antoinette Zwirchmayr lives and works in Vienna. Her film works have been shown at numerous festivals, including the Berlinale (DE), the Toronto International Film Festival (CA), the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (DE), FID Marseille (FR), and CPH:DOX (DK). Her work has also been presented at the Anthology Film Archives in New York (US), in the CINEMATEK in Brussels (BE), the Filmoteca Española Madrid (ES), and the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montreal (CND).