HYLO-VISION-PLUS. Version 2

The first moving image in Dietmar Brehm’s Hylo-Vision-Plus. Version 2 is still without sound. An upper body, the left hand rowing, exposing one breast, while on the right, the silhouette fibrillates in rays of light. Repetition and difference are identifying marks in several works by the filmmaker from Linz, and here, too: while the found-footage images from Trainspotting (1996) form a frenetic nocturnal round dance in the first part of this small series, this time the tempo seems curbed, the atmosphere subdued. The strike of a gong segues to a mask-like close-up of a face whose eyes seem to have been punched out, and this ultimately opens another regime: an arena of grotesque expressions, a carousel of grimacing skulls, it could be a death dance of sorts. In the negative image, individual parts of the face emerge like signals in the flickering blue light, trance-like, accompanied by a looped sound frequency of “Horizontal Hold” by the post-punk band This Heat. Ears that appear as though scratched onto material, threatening eye sockets, shadows forming like small lakes behind the ridge of a nose—a physiognomic landscape that brings to mind the first shocking reports on the effects of silent movies, which told of a dubious interstitial zone between life and death. However, Brehm goes the opposite way, as it were, and sets the static facial images themselves in a state of agitation. The movements are minimal, slight turns of the heads, short expressive thrusts, a teetering dance; this has to suffice here, the rest is taken care of by the flickering of the lights. But like a ghostly dream, also Hylo-Vision-Plus. Version 2 ends again. The midnight awakening ends where it began: with a face from which all life slips out. (Dominik Kamalzadeh)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt