Baumeister

experimental film
8 min 31 sec
sound by Constantin Popp
2012

The camera moves in a spiral along the ceiling: it takes up its circular form by tracing out the seams between two elements of the ceiling; rectangular lamps emerge one after another like a schematic depiction of sunbeams or the spokes of a wheel; parallel to this, the soundtrack evokes atmospheric, resonant ”drops”— at least one of a countless number of associations.The video Baumeister looks at the deserted interior of ORF’s Studio Dornbirn. Planned and built by Gustav Peichl from 1969 to 1972, its formal basis is the spiral, the figure consisting of a line running from the inside out that can also be found on the human body, in the navel or our ears. The form of the spiral in Peichl’s radio buildings indeed takes on a symbolic reference to the body and its functions. Just as the architecture translates the function of listening, Claudia Larcher’s video makes a reference to vision. The camera is the eye that tries to capture the structure of space by tracing out its movements, repeating them. But seeing (just as listening or feeling) is not an objectivizing act. It is narrowly linked to the memories of the person perceiving. To this extent, it never generates a continuous space of experience. It rather produces images from superimpositions, transformations, and condensations.