Ink Eraser

In 2010, the television show Tatort celebrates its fortieth birthday: no other production has influenced a genre so greatly or been the epitome of popular German culture for such a long time. Veronika Schubert’s found footage animation Ink Eraser draws from this rich reservoir. The artist’s special interest, however, is not in the genre or the medium, but instead, in what the genre and the medium contribute to contemporary visual and linguistic culture. Ink Eraser is a montage of entirely incidentally emerging visual and linguistic clichés and phrases. The genre of constitutive gestures is called on for this: the discovery of a corpse, a telephone conversation, a lying suspect, a confessing murderess, an assurance that it is all routine, is not intentional, etc.; on the other hand, the composition allows the shreds of language and images to also come to unusual, surprising, even humorous insights and points:
Was the dead woman having her period? – That would most definitely interest Dr. Eckermann! A bit of coke isn’t a big thing…… – No thanks, I’m on duty.



Ink Eraser abstracts a collage from rituals and banalities that define every television crime show, as such, and compiles, quasi literally, a type of blueprint of the genre: ink rather than blood flows through the images. In tedious, finely detailed work, Schubert processed 3,000 individual images with ink and eraser pen. This technique rests on the progression of saturation and emptiness, of blue color that is made visible and invisible, which then appears as white. Tension and intensity thus become immediately visible in icy dark blue images that at some point freeze the blood of their viewers to ice.
(Sylvia Szely)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt

Orig. Title
Tintenkiller
Year
2009
Countries
Austria, Czech Republic
Duration
4 min 30 sec
Category
Animation
Orig. Language
German
Subtitles
English
Downloads
Ink Eraser (Image)
Ink Eraser (Image)
Ink Eraser (Image)
Credits
Director
Veronika Schubert
Concept & Realization
Veronika Schubert
Supported by
Egon Schiele Art Centrum, bm:ukk
Available Formats
Digital File (prores, h264) (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
16:9
Sound Format
stereo
Frame Rate
25 fps
Color Format
colour
Festivals (Selection)
2010
Graz - Diagonale, Festival des österreichischen Films
Wien - Tricky Women / Animationsfilmfestival (Best Austrian Animation (Hubert Sielecki Award))
Wien - VIS Vienna Independent Shorts
Zagreb – Animafest, Festival on Animated Films
Hamburg - Int. Kurzfilm-Festival & No Budget
Utrecht - Holland Animation Film Festival
Kassel - Dokumentarfilm- & Videofest
München - UnderDox, Festival für Dokument und Experiment
Ljubiljana Animateka - Int. Animation Film Festival
Istanbul - Int. Short Film Festival
2011
Stuttgart - Filmwinter, Expanded Media Festival
Bamberg - Kurzfilmtage
Seoul - International Women's Film Festival
Nashville Film Festival
2014
Bruxelles - Festival of Cartoons & Animated Films