A camera filming nothing but its own existence in an empty room. Art or accident?
Philipp Fleischmann develops special cameras designed to formulate specific relations between the material of the footage (16 or 35 mm film) and the object of the recording. For instance, in his 2013 project “Main Hall,” he deconstructs the main exhibition hall of the Viennese Secession, filming the exhibition architecture with 19 individual cameras and thus creating images that show the view of the exhibition space onto itself. Fleischmann’s recent work, “Untitled (Generali Foundation Vienna)" identifies the film camera as a spacial object-form by itself. Correlating with the history of artistic interventions on site, the object is placed in the former exhibition space of the Generali Foundation at Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15, Vienna, and provided with a cinematographic view.
Cinematography
19 cameras deconstructing a single empty space.
Direction
Camera becomes performer, set, and spectator.
Director
Philipp Fleischmann
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Generali Foundation was a major hub for conceptual art until its controversial 2014 closure, making this elegiac footage unexpectedly timely.
Fleischmann's 'Main Hall' precedent at the Secession established his method: using multiple cameras to fracture institutional space into self-witnessing fragments.
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