Help us welcome and celebrate the film work of Andreas Wutz with our NYC based, photo-chemical filmmaking, friends at Negativland Motion Picture Lab. We are thrilled to be supporting a program of NYC premieres primarily on 16mm and hosting a conversation with Andreas Wutz, and local presenting artists Josh Lewis and Simon Liu from Negativland Lab.

Interested in filming the invisible and recording the inaudible means recalling the images and sounds in between, Wutz is working very much in the historical tradition through extended research, hand-painted frames, and perceptual explorations.

The screening will provide an insight into the filmic work of the conceptual media artist Andreas Wutz who is living in Munich and Bilbao. Most recently he has been working on a film installation in Toronto, a photo project in Albacete, Spain, and a long-term research in Zimbabwe resulting in a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. His 16mm films are short cinepoems which use experimental and documentary strategies, and are equally interested in the visual world as in the invisual and the world of sound. In general, the artist uses media self-reflectively and his work is driven by a deep interest in social-political or environmental themes as well as in historical references of secondary order.

Wutz’s films have been presented before at international film festivals such as in Rotterdam, Utrecht, Bilbao, Hongkong, Nairobi or Harare, or by screenings at Kino Arsenal Berlin, Filmmuseum Munich, Pixfilm Toronto or Lux London.

An experimental film about the ambiguous sensation of fear and elation experienced during the loneliness of a night race. Original footages of the „24 Hours of Le Mans“ are associated with pictures of Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic airplane „The Spirit of St. Louis“ and quotations by Antoine Saint-Exupéry and Bertolt Brecht.

“Nightwalk” (original title: Noční Procházka) was filmed on a nocturnal circle walk around the city of Prague. It tries to understand a city by its urban surroundings, by its psychogeography and by aspects of the Other and Non-human.

This film is about an inner conflict of enforced voyage or migration, about the contradictory wish to stay at place and leave it at the same time. The film is based on a dream noted by Franz Kafka who describes travellers carrying their clothes to their suitcases for packing. Surprisingly the voyagers don’t do this privately at home but in the public at a railway station in Prague. In the film these sequences are framed by the image of a flag pole at night and a coastal observation tower at the port of Cuxhaven. From here, at the times of Franz Kafka, millions of voyagers and migrants started their passage to America.

The short film explores the situation of exterritorial places and national borders as it can be studied in the embassy area Bubeneč in Prague. The Czech capital is home of nations from all over the world and each nation occupies one mini-territory in a garden town looking idyllic and peaceful

In 1979 ended the long and traumatic liberation war of Zimbabwe that took place in the bush. In 1962 the Botanic Garden of Harare was founded as a model of exactly this landscape. The film asks how the Zimbabwean landscape and the war trauma are interrelated.

Vertical exposures follow the natural trajectory of the film strip, various chemicals are applied in tight quarters by hand under red light. Under these conditions, the struggle to maintain control quickly gives way to a kind of desperate religion.

Forgive my nerves and rattling of subjective coloring and inverted subjects! Views shuffle from wet markets in Hong Kong to family gatherings in English gardens; trips around the world are at thumb’s reach in Shuffle Cove!! The boundaries between memories collapse in our journey along this cove; an incessant swiping between instants.

This film is a shaky record of my trudging foray into special-effects printing and the indulgence found in rediscovering old film strips. Photochemical manipulations and celluloid printing procedures weld together then shred apart film scraps guided by pleasure for a visual clash and at moments, harmony.

Andreas Wutz is an independent artist, who graduated in painting and installation art, and has subsequently focused on photography, media installation and art film. He has been teaching Audio-Visual Art, Art Film and New Media at the Escola Superior de Disseny in Barcelona, and at the University of California in San Diego. Most recently, he has done a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo and a solo exhibition at Pixfilm Gallery in Toronto. Artist’ website: www.andreaswutz.net

Negativland Motion Picture Lab is an artist-run work space based in Ridgewood, NY. Initiated in 2015, in response to a rapidly collapsing commercial film industry, Negativland has sought to foster continued explorations of photo-chemical filmmaking. Our focus is on experimental printing and darkroom processes, collaborative work, open dissemination of technical knowledge, and a continued desire for greater autonomy in the production of finished works on film. As part of our mission, we offer workflow guidance and engage in creative collaborations with artists and filmmakers. We restore old equipment, build new stuff, and provide public instruction and rental for all items at our facility. We also offer custom processing and film preservation services. www.negatlivlandlab.com

Josh Lewis is an artist and filmmaker working at a fluid intersection between abstraction, documentary, and narrative forms. His handmade films explore the boundaries of manual knowledge, bodily struggle, and the persisting enigma of material potential. His work has been shown at venues such as The Centre Pompidou, Anthology Film Archives, Microscope Gallery, Eyebeam, UnionDocs, The Filmmaker’s Co-op NY, and at festivals such as The International Film Festival Rotterdam, Chicago Underground Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, Antimatter, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, and EDOC: Encuentros del otro cine festival internacional de cine documental. (www.joshlewisfilm.com).

Simon Liu was raised between Hong Kong and Stoke-On-Trent, UK and now resides in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been presented at festivals internationally including the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2016 & 2017, BFI London Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Hamburg International Short Film Festival, Festival du Nouvéau Cinéma, Maryland Film Festival, Untitled Art Fair, Crossroads, EXiS, WNDX, AntiMatter [media art], Paris Festival of Different & Experimental Cinemas, Rio De Janeiro International Film Festival, Kassel Dokfest and Mono No Aware IX & X. His most recent 16mm multiple projection work (Cluster Click City Sundays) premiered at DREAMLANDS: EXPANDED – an expanded cinema series held by Microscope Gallery and the Whitney Museum of American Art (www.liufilmsliu.com).