Beyond & Innerer Monolog

2008, PAL 4:3, 6:10 & 6:20 min, colour, stereo
Idea and realisation: Annja Krautgasser; assistant 1: Michael Jung; assistant 2: Nicole Six; camera 1: Dariusz Kowalski; camera 2: Sasha Pirker; location recording: Emanuel Danesch; sound mastering: Martin Siewert; welder: Matthias Hammer; location manager 1: Michaela Schwentner; location manager 2: Evamaria Trischak; costumes: Dietlind Rott, speaker in Innerer Monolog: Kathryn Nightingall

© Video still

There are actually two versions of the latest video by Annja Krautgasser (aka [n:ja]): One is called Innerer Monolog (Stream of Consciousness), the other is called Beyond. Even though, except for the closing scenes, Krautgasser has used almost the same footage for both videos the two works are very different. Whereas in Innerer Monolog she focuses on an architectural portrait of a building in the 15th district of Vienna, which has a soundtrack that adds rich atmosphere by means of imaginary episodes, in Beyond, the visual perspective is extended by another level: the artist shows the (unexpectedly large) film set in the last shot to reveal the way the video was made. She illustrates the method and conditions of the production in exactly the same way as she did with several fragments of the architectural composition that came before. Only the bright flashing light of varying intensity that is created by a welding torch opens and closes the view of the building’s façade, and also of the recording equipment being used. The architecture—appropriately, a transformer station—flickers to the rhythm of the work in progress. The video proves to be a structurally designed architectural portrait as well as a making-of film.

Technically, Beyond consists of three movements that flow into one another and are regularly interrupted by black frames—complete darkness. The camera pans from left to right past individual details of the modern looking frontage before panning back to show a view of the façade—subsequently repeatedly, but nevertheless remaining fragmentary. From the middle of the work onwards the camera movement reverses until, with a light pan upwards, the shot of the frontage sinks into the darkness of the night. Krautgasser plays here with the conventions of the genre. Following the logic of suspense, only a trace or slightly too little is to be seen, while on the level of the soundtrack—passing cars, clacking high-heels, bird twittering—everything remains only suggested. Incidentally, the building does not yet feature anywhere in the official history of Austrian architecture. Constructed by the architect Heinrich Schmid in the 1970s, this building—like the videoBeyond—leads a discrete existence.

(Dietmar Schwärzler)