Claudia Larcher is the co-recipient of the Erste Bank's
MoreVALUE Film Award, which she received for
Self at the 2015
Viennale. On the occasion of her one-month residency at Deutsches Haus at NYU, we co-present with
Anthology Film Archives,
Erste Bank, and the
Austrian Cultural Forum a showcase of her short films, including
Self (2015). For her Show & Tell program on Thursday, July 21 at 7:30 p.m., Claudia Larcher will be present in person to present a selection of her video works, alongside a film she has selected, Billy Roisz’s
darkroom.
Claudia Larcher was born in Bregenz, Austria in 1979. She lives and works in Vienna. Her artistic work deals with architecture. She is interested in places, that are connected to history, familiarity and memory, questioning the meaning of “home” and “identity”. The last years she was working in the field of photocollage, (site-specific) video animation and mixed media installation. She is doing live visuals in performances and for live concerts. Claudia Larcher is co-curating the exhibitions of the artist collective PLINQUE since 2008.
Since 2011, each annual edition of the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival) has featured the presentation of the MoreVALUE Film Award to one or more Austrian filmmakers whose films are included in the festival. Designed to showcase the best of Austrian cinema, the award was founded by Erste Bank, the Viennale’s main sponsor, and is awarded by an independent jury. The award brings a cash prize as well as a one-month residency as a visiting film scholar hosted and organized by the Deutsches Haus at NYU. The screenings are co-organized by the Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Anthology Film Archives has presented the award-winning films in the past, and they continue the tradition this year with special screenings of both of the 2015 winners: Jakob Brossmann’s Lampedusa in Winter and Claudia Larcher’s video work Self.
Everytown, 2007, 2 min, digital, b&w; Heim, 2008, 12 min, digital; Empty Rooms, 2011, 12 min, digital; Between the Ocean, 2013, 5 min, digital; Self, 2015, 8 min, digital & Billy Roisz darkroom, 2014, 13 min, digital
Austrian artist Claudia Larcher’s highly distinctive body of work encompasses photo-collage, site-specific video animation, and mixed media installation. At the heart of all her work, whatever the medium, is a preoccupation with architecture, and with the traces of history and memory that suffuse particular places. Questioning the meaning of ‘home’ and notions of identity, many of her moving image pieces take the form of digitally manipulated explorations of interior spaces in which people are absent and yet their imprint is unmistakably present. Combining photography and animation, works such as HEIM and EMPTY ROOMS find Larcher using digital tools to create impossible, endlessly circling pans, with spaces perceptibly but fluidly morphing into other spaces. The effect, thanks to the films’ inexorable, inhuman camera movement and subtly creepy soundtracks, is deeply unsettling.
In her most recent video work, Self, Larcher applies this method to the surface of the human body, creating a similarly implacable, never-ending traveling shot across a bodily landscape that is at once hyper-real and alarmingly artificial. A kind of organic reconfiguration of her architecturally-oriented earlier films, it demonstrates the versatility of the unique technique she’s developed.
Total running time of showcase: ca. 60 min., Thursday, July 21 at 7:30 p.m.
You can find more information on the screening of the second award-winning film, Jakob Brossmann's feature Lampedusa in Winter here.
Claudia Larcher was born in Bregenz, Austria in 1979. She lives and works in Vienna. Her artistic work deals with architecture. She is interested in places, that are connected to history, familiarity and memory, questioning the meaning of “home” and “identity”. The last years she was working in the field of photocollage, (site-specific) video animation and mixed media installation. She is doing live visuals in performances and for live concerts. Claudia Larcher is co-curating the exhibitions of the artist collective PLINQUE since 2008.
Since 2011, each annual edition of the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival) has featured the presentation of the MoreVALUE Film Award to one or more Austrian filmmakers whose films are included in the festival. Designed to showcase the best of Austrian cinema, the award was founded by Erste Bank, the Viennale’s main sponsor, and is awarded by an independent jury. The award brings a cash prize as well as a one-month residency as a visiting film scholar hosted and organized by the Deutsches Haus at NYU. The screenings are co-organized by the Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Anthology Film Archives has presented the award-winning films in the past, and they continue the tradition this year with special screenings of both of the 2015 winners: Jakob Brossmann’s Lampedusa in Winter and Claudia Larcher’s video work Self.
Everytown, 2007, 2 min, digital, b&w; Heim, 2008, 12 min, digital; Empty Rooms, 2011, 12 min, digital; Between the Ocean, 2013, 5 min, digital; Self, 2015, 8 min, digital & Billy Roisz darkroom, 2014, 13 min, digital
Austrian artist Claudia Larcher’s highly distinctive body of work encompasses photo-collage, site-specific video animation, and mixed media installation. At the heart of all her work, whatever the medium, is a preoccupation with architecture, and with the traces of history and memory that suffuse particular places. Questioning the meaning of ‘home’ and notions of identity, many of her moving image pieces take the form of digitally manipulated explorations of interior spaces in which people are absent and yet their imprint is unmistakably present. Combining photography and animation, works such as HEIM and EMPTY ROOMS find Larcher using digital tools to create impossible, endlessly circling pans, with spaces perceptibly but fluidly morphing into other spaces. The effect, thanks to the films’ inexorable, inhuman camera movement and subtly creepy soundtracks, is deeply unsettling.
In her most recent video work, Self, Larcher applies this method to the surface of the human body, creating a similarly implacable, never-ending traveling shot across a bodily landscape that is at once hyper-real and alarmingly artificial. A kind of organic reconfiguration of her architecturally-oriented earlier films, it demonstrates the versatility of the unique technique she’s developed.
Total running time of showcase: ca. 60 min., Thursday, July 21 at 7:30 p.m.
You can find more information on the screening of the second award-winning film, Jakob Brossmann's feature Lampedusa in Winter here.