Figure, Ground

2023 | Video | 18:47 min | UHD | 4:3 | stereo sound




Figure, Ground is a new weird grand tour around (mass) tourism, iconoclasm and the climate class divide. The film focuses on places in Europe that were locations of catastrophes in the past - and are tourist magnets today, partly precisely because of these natural disasters. In these places, figure and ground have been reversed; by a leaping forward of the landscape, the classical „background“, into the center of the picture. The work asks how we can challenge our assumptions of protagonist and background, closeness and distance, center and periphery.

Will climate change manifest itself as a series of disasters, viewed through phones, with footage that gets closer and closer until you‘re the one filming it?













Video stills

























Installation views


Are you happy to be in Paris?, Künstler*innenhaus Bregenz, Bregenz, AT.



Are you happy to be in Paris?, Künstler*innenhaus Bregenz, Bregenz, AT.



Are you happy to be in Paris?, Künstler*innenhaus Bregenz, Bregenz, AT.



with A year without summer, 2024, marker on steel on wood.
Installation view Are you happy to be in Paris?, Künstler*innenhaus Bregenz, Bregenz, AT.



Are you happy to be in Paris?, Künstler*innenhaus Bregenz, Bregenz, AT.



Are you happy to be in Paris?, Künstler*innenhaus Bregenz, Bregenz, AT. Work in foreground by Malin Dorn.











Credits

script, locations, editing, 2nd camera, sound
        Laura Leppert

DOP
        Mathias Reitz Zausinger

performers
        Kim Bode, Karla Krey, Georg Paul, Johanna K Michel, Viktor Petrov, Florian Purschke, Mika Schwarz, I-Chieh Tsai, Asís Ybarra

supported & funded by

Social Impact EU, Bayern Innovativ / Junge Kunst & Neue Wege