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
