The Fencing Play (dir. Lukas Jiřička, Martin Ježek, Robert Piotrowicz) and Exterior Extended (dir. Siegfried A. Fruhauf)

Kinomuzeum kindly invites you to the premiere of two experimental video works which, based on the concept of the structural cinema and intense voice narration, reflect on the idea of the limits of perception and the boundaries of space controlled by the regimes of the language, on classic narrative and film illusion.

While testing the aesthetic limits of film (metaphorical fencings and boundaries), in their analytical and abstract realizations, the artists invited tackle philosophical issues connected with cognition and the existential condition of an individual.

The evening will be opened with the screening of the latest film of an Austrian movie-maker, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, student of a renowned avant-garde director of expanded cinema, Peter Tscherkassky, whose work, Exterior Extended, subjects 36 photographs recorded on a 35 mm tape to montage experiments. While testing the spatial boundaries of the stills and the depth of the image, Fruhauf records the “exterior” through empty window frames of an abandoned house. Then, using digital technique, he systematically shuffles the positives and the negatives, thus creating minimalistic dialogue between nature and architecture. The aggressive staccato of film images is accompanies by static drone music.

The Fencing Play [Gra w ogrodzenie], situated in between the art of sound, a radio drama and an experimental film, is an attempt to visualise voice in the darkness, which soon gives way to a frenetic superimposition of images recorded on a 35 mm tape. The video work was based on the text of the experimental prose of the Czech poet, Stanislav Dvorsky, connected with a group of neo-surrealists. Rooted in the traditions of absurd literature, the poetical dimension of the text in the adaptation of Lukas Jiřička touches the material and corporeal dimension of the word. The visual layer is convergent on the level of the tone and sound narrative by Robert Piotrowicz which, based on a series of studio and composition strategies, takes the listener to an oneiric landscape painted with sound.

After the screening, we would like to invite you to participate in the discussion between Kuba Mikurda and Lukas Jiřička.