There are Pictures, because there are Walls – A Prologue

Eye and camera sweep a trailer home that is being disassembled piece by piece, thus making it ever more permeable. While the eye and camera move along surfaces, objects, and views, we hear a voice (that of Sasha Pirker), speaking about bed, doors, walls, a room, that is “entirely superfluous,” movement, and standstill. Basically, various types of spaces* are described—from a bed(room) as the only inalienable individual space, through to functionless space that “is good for nothing,” and which “does not have to refer to anything.”
In various sequences, one can observe how the sculptor Christian Ruschitzka and his assistants carefully carry away the mobile home layer for layer and the artist then re-layers the individual elements, quasi compacting them to objects. The form of compacting, for its part, refers to a die for bricks, with which the artist’s studio was originally built. This literal dismantling of the trailer home, its sculptural transformation and the spoken texts invite a contemplation of housing and homelessness, use and usefulness. Space is dissected three times over—cinematically, linguistically, and at the hands of the artist, but nonetheless withdraws to the same extent from language, cinematic recording, and physical embodiment. The approach to space by Pirker corresponds entirely with George Perec’s, from whom the text passages originate. Perec assumes that space never belongs to a person, can never be given to them. One has to (steadily) appropriate it. In this sense, Pirker’s film can only be a prologue for the continued appropriation of the space, knowing full well that it will always slip out of one’s hands.
(Barbara Steiner)

* The text passages are taken from the book Espèces d’espaces, 1974* by Georges Perec. The book was published in German as Träume von Räumen, and in English as Species of Spaces and Other Pieces.
Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt

Orig. Title
Es gibt Bilder, weil es Wände gibt - Ein Prolog
Year
2013
Country
Austria
Duration
10 min
Director
Sasha Pirker
Category
Documentary
Orig. Language
German
Subtitles
English
Credits
Director
Sasha Pirker
Concept & Realization
Sasha Pirker
Actor/Actress
Christian Ruschitzka
Supported by
bm:ukk
Available Formats
Digital File (prores, h264)
Festivals (Selection)
2014
Graz - Diagonale, Festival des Österreichischen Films
Oberhausen - Int. Kurzfilmtage
Uppsala - Int. Short Film Festival
Kassel - Dokumentarfilm- & Videofest
München - UnderDox, Festival für Dokument und Experiment
2015
Ann Arbor - Film Festival
Weimar - back-up festival. new media in film