Runa Islam. Empty the pond to get the fish

  • Runa Islam. Empty the pond to get the fish

    Runa Islam - staw, by złapać rybę (2008)

In her 35-mm film installation Empty the pond to get the fish (2008), Runa Islam explores an abandoned modernist building by the Austrian architect Karl Schwanzer that was originally built for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels and later renovated to become the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Vienna. In this non-mimetic cinematography the artist recalls the traditions of abstract and structuralist filmmaking, and attempts to subvert the traditional dependence of cinematography on narrative. The visual narrative emerges from the movement of the camera as it writes out the sentence €˜Empty the pond to get the fish’€”based on the exact typographical image of this sentence in the English edition of Robert Bresson’s Notes sur le cinématographe.

Runa Islam - born 1970 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, lives in London

The screening is part of the "Modernologies" exhibition organised by Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in cooperation with Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).

Empty the pond to get the fish, 2008
Film installation; 35 mm film, colour, sound, 12 min 8 sec (looped); produced by Museum of Modern Art Foundation Ludwig Vienna and White Cube, London; Edition of 5 plus 1 AP; Production: Brains & Pictures, Vienna; project manager: Claudia Dohr; production assistant: Anna Artaker; Grip / motion control: Gunnar Kaiser; photography: Thomas Kirschner; gaffer: Thomas Schindler; grip assistant: Alex Brozek; camera assistant: Oliver Schneider; sound design: Mick Ritchie; sound recordist: Wolfgang Mohaupt; runner: Clemens Roesch; special thanks to: Matthias Michalka; Museum of Modern Art Foundation Ludwig Vienna, Donation 2008