Björn Kämmerer – Louver

Louver from Sonic Acts on Vimeo.

Louver is a work by Björn Kämmerer, commissioned by Sonic Acts for Vertical Cinema (2013). ‘What are we watching?’ is the first thing viewers of Louver might ask themselves. Connoisseurs of Kämmerer’s work are aware that we are possibly witnessing a perceptual illusion caused by the mysterious hypnotic ‘two-dimensional’ movements of a light-object. Our distracted senses are unable to determine if we are observing the ‘real thing’ or abstract patterns of ‘digital light’. Here, we might also try and seek structure, some mathematical point where the movements are conducted, so they can reveal the meaning of the image. But it soon becomes apparent that the subject is Time itself: the time that is needed for the mysterious patterns to develop their own rhythms, and then to disappear into the dark frame from which they emerge. What was once a glittering screen of light grids now appears to us as a one- dimensional dark universe of the unknown. Louver is a grid, a raster, it can also be a shutter, a way to control the amount of light. There is something hauntingly cinematic in the set-up of this film. First, the format is created by the structure, challenging the vertical with four images on top of each other, moving horizontally, and then acknowledging that the filmed object is a form of light, as is the film itself. And that is what we are actually observing: a movement of light that collapses into an endless stream of associations in the viewers’ mind. If that isn’t film, then nothing is. 12 October 2013 Kontraste 2013 Krems, Austria www.kontraste.sonicacts.com 24 January 2014 International Film Festival Rotterdam Rotterdam, the Netherlands www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com 20, 21, 22 & 23 February 2014 Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam Amsterdam, the Netherlands www.stedelijk.nl 7 & 8 November 2014 Leeds International Film Festival Leeds, England www.leedsfilm.com

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