June 2016

M+M 7 Days

In an installation created especially for the Fürstensaal room of the Museum für Fotografie, the Munich-based artist-duo M+M are featuring a film cycle entitled 7 Days. The seven-part work is shown in its entirety, each part having been developed successively by M+M within a timeframe just short of seven years. The installation is akin to a multi-perspective cinema, in which the language of film expands to include the surrounding spatial structures and incorporate new narrative styles. Each film of the cycle tells its own story, though split in two and projected as separate, parallel variants. The protagonist – played by the actor Christoph Luser – finds himself subjected within the “seven days" to a variety of seemingly mundane, yet also entirely contradictory, situations. All seven films relate in some way to key scenes from different movies, in which the psychological dimension of interpersonal relationships plays a particularly significant role . By presenting them in dual format, M+M create new interpretations of the scenes while developing a cinematic language that explores the mutability of contemporary identity.

This approach characterizes M+M's re-imaginings of scenes from a number of films, including Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963), John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977), and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), with each film dedicated to a particular day of the week. There are certain themes that crop up to some degree throughout the different films, such as the relationships between father, mother, and child, and the forces of erotic attraction (or alienation) between a man and a woman, or between men. Each film comprises a precisely synchronized dual projection, with identical dialogue, camera work, and editing, in the midst of which one character is replaced by another. Consequently dialogues and storylines are subject to change both in terms of their mood and meaning, be it on a subliminal level or more substantially, which in turn brings an unsettlingly diverse range of different facets to the fore. An integral aspect of7 Days is the arrangement of the projection screens in the room, the fragmentation of the homogeneous film space and its narrative structure into a multi-perspective cinema, from which an engaged observer is able to derive interconnections between the projections, multiple images, and stories. By exploring the possibilities and peculiarities of synchronized storytelling, a form with which the 7 Days film installation actively experiments, M+M give expression to their interest in the increasingly complex experiences of space, identity, and time, that have come to characterize our society.

M+M frequently combine different media in their conceptual-oriented work, from photography, video, and film, through sculpture, to architecture and projections in public spaces. Their activities have in recent years focused on multimedia installations.

Details

An exhibition of the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Mussen zu Berlin, in cooperation with Villa Aurora.

Screening

WE ARE YOUNG, WE ARE STRONG

Dir.: Burhan Qurbani, Germany, 2014, 116 min., German and Vietnamese with English subtitles, digital. Screenplay: Burhan Qurbani, Martin Behnke. Cast: Devid Striesow, Jonas Nay, Trang Le Hong, Joel Basman, Saskia Rosendahl, Thorsten Merten, Paul Gäbler, David Schütter, Jakob Bieber, Swantje Kohlhof, Mai Duong Kieu, Aaron Le, Lariss Füchs, Axel Pape

Discussion with Director Burhan Qurbani, and reception following the screening.

RSVP via Eventbrite

August of 1992. Three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, anti-immigrant attacks targeting a refugee shelter on the outskirts of the former East German city of Rostock culminate in the notorious “Night of the Fire.”  Following three days of violence, nearly 3,000 rioters, neo-Nazis and bystanders set fire to the shelter, trapping Vietnamese refugees and a group of journalists inside.

Qurbani’s controversial film recounts the hours leading up the evening’s startling events as experienced by three very different characters:Lien, a young Vietnamese immigrant, caught in a struggle for survival; Stefan, an insecure youth, who, along with his friends participates in the night’s riots; and Stefan’s father Martin, an ambitious local politician torn between advancing his career by remaining silent, and standing up for his ideals, taking action to stop the riots. 
Qurbani meticulously recreates the look and feel of the era, when many East German cities struggled with unemployment and feelings of isolation from the West, exposing the complex issue of xenophobia in a country thought to have been healed by German reunification.

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Select Awards:

• German Film Award 2015 (Best Supporting Actor - Joel Basman)
• Sofia IFF 2015 (International Jury Special Award)
• Deutscher Schauspielerpreis 2015 (Best Actor-Devid Striesow)
• Rome IFF 2014 (Best Editing, SIGNIS Award- Ente dello Spettacolo, Sorriso diverso Roma-Best Foreign Film)
• Filmtage Hof 2014 (Best Costume Design, Best Set Design)
• The German Cinema Award for Peace - The Bridge (New Talent: Burhan Qurbani)

Thomas Köner & Ulrich Krieger

dissolve_areas

sounds disintegrate

re-grouping conglomerates

imploding to dust

drifting apart

breathing bristle gray textures

The duo 'zerfall_gebiete' blends the soft, acoustic, extended quasi-electronic sounds of Krieger's saxophone with the elaborated electronics of Koener: the instrument sounds like electronics, the electronics sound like instruments and in the end it is unimportant who has done what, all becomes one. The different fields merge into a single, complex soundscape, which together with the visuals becomes an integrated experience. Dark Ambient drones, subtle noises, slow developing sensual textures, and an occasional hint of a melody…

Ulrich Krieger is well known as a saxophone player in  contemporary composed and free improvised music as well as a composer of chamber music and electronic music.

Thomas Köner is working as media artist across the spheres of composition, visual arts, installation and music production.