void.seqz1

A vertical graphic element running from left to right draws across the white screen. The graphic´s appearance is so vague and re-strained that it looks like it could disappear at any moment. This is accompanied by a soundtrack, reduced to a few tones and contrasts that develops a strong presence. It looks as if the pixel element running vertically that produces the image is looking for a niche in the space of perception determined by the sound. Just before the graphic element reaches the right edge of the screen for the first time, from one moment to the next it becomes increasingly striking although without relinquishing its restraint towards the sound. One begins to realise that the pixel element is subtly reacting to the sound with changes in colouring. The screen is then covered with continually new layers from left to right at an even tempo. The sound and subsequently the image gain increasingly in contrast until both slowly disappear from the screen at the end.
Annja Krautgasser continues her void.seqz series of videos, which were produced during a live performance with the musician Martin Siewert. They are based on sound and images improvised at the moment of the performance. The most recent of these sequences, all of which are based on a specially written auto-generative script extracted from the cooperation, is void.seqz 1. The collaboration with the composer Martin Siewert began in 2002 as part of the formation VOID1 - a collective of musicians and artists who performed in various collaborations between 2000 and 2005. The performers made sound and image inter-react in dialogue-based live settings for the project. The type of authorship also shifts from multiple and split authorship at the moment of the performance into an apparently singular authorship after the transferral to the more placeless and timeless format of video. There is a revealing allusion, to be found in Martha Woodmannsee´s paper On the Author Effect. Recovering Collectivity, to a statement made by the Franciscan monk St. Bonaventura in the 13th century:2 a notion of the author as somebody who writes his or her own work as well as writing that of others although giving priority to their own work. The independent and original would accordingly be understood as part of a shared collective process. In the working method applied for the void.seqz series, a collective practise preceded the independent one. The performatively executed arrangements are continued in a different format with an altered organisation. The controlled interaction between sound, image, and auto-generative script promotes cross connections, as does the later transfer onto video that always also allude to the individual elements. With such a method, the individual does not unfold in the shared collective experience but emerges from it and, in addition, finds a precise formal solution.

(Joerg Franzbecker)


1
consisting of Radian, Martin Siewert, i.e the artists Dariusz Kowalski, Annja Krautgasser, Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Timo Novotny, Maia Gusberti, and Nik Thoenen.
2
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/92wood.htm