Austrian Pavilion (Philipp Fleischmann, 2019) (Patreon)

Unlike so many of the experimental filmmakers who have come out of Austria in recent years, Philipp Fleischmann is not primarily concerned with cinematic perception, the ontological basis for the movies, or problems of signification. Granted, his films tangentially touch on these matters, but Fleischmann is much more of a conceptualist of institutions. He has more in common with artists like Hans Haacke, Daniel Buren, and especially Michael Asher. His films, while not cameraless by the traditional definition, are raw inscriptions of light that are also inscriptions of power structures, particularly those surrounding the cultural sphere.

So thought of simply as a filmmaker, Fleischmann is in league with a small group of individuals who have used celluloid as a material marker for the tangible recording of light events, a kind of scientific registration of certain events that, while "photo-graphic" in the strictest sense, do not yield conventional images. These filmmakers include Saul Levine, Lynn Marie Kirby, David Gatten, and Jennifer West. But in the case of Fleischmann's work, he has built special camera-sculptures that expose his films within particular architectural spaces, in order to inscribe those architectural spaces, over time, directly onto the filmstrip, minimizing as much as possible the intermediary stage of representation as such.

The latest in a series that examines official spaces of Austrian cultural import, Austrian Pavilion is precisely what it says it is -- a film exposed in the Austrian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. The building by Josef Hoffmann is organized according to basic symmetries, and an attempt to harmonize the interior and exterior spaces. Fleischmann's film uses a time-based flicker to combine two spaces in one, as what appears to be a pinhole apparatus describes the spaces of the pavilion in a 360º vertical tilt around the space, ceiling to floor. Through the flicker, trees "penetrate" the architecture, and light and dark exchange places.

Fleischmann has stated that he sees the film as an unofficial contribution to the pavilion's history. What would experimental film contribute to that history if it had its place among its annals? The answer he provides, at least tentatively, is that experimental film could document its own process of entering the space, of being seen and seeing, and calling attention to the space that confers cultural legitimacy upon those objects that enter its hallowed halls.