MASTERCLASS

Gusztáv Hámos, Katja Pratschke

With their photo-filmic work as a basis, since 2000 Gusztáv Hámos and Katja Pratschke (Berlin) have explored what constitutes the difference between a still and a moving image, as well as which consequences phase-image recording has for our conception of time, space and movement.

In the first session, Gusztáv Hámos and Katja Pratschke are presenting their archival project Sampling Cities (2012-2019) and contemplating upon non/archival gestures and the confrontation with the still image in a cinematographic context. In the second session, Gusztáv Hámos, Katja Pratschke are utilizing their work Rope (A Dead Man's Dream) (2016), a reconstruction of the short novel "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, to consider the 'stratigraphic' quality of a film image and the principle of chronophotography, as well as digital image-in-image montage strategies applied in the re-enacted photo-filmic work Rope.

Rope (A Dead Man's Dream)

Digital, 27.30 min, Eng. OV, 2016

Synopsis

The Rope is based on Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", a novel set during the American Civil War (1861-65). In this war, the northern Union forces fought against the southern Confederates to end the slavery of the American African population. For the reconstruction of the story, the narration was decomposed into its components and explored with the help of chronophotography, cycloramas and stacking methods. A series of still images showing the circumstances of the hanging of the wealthy planter and slave owner Peyton Farquhar on the Alabama Railway Bridge is accompanied by a continuous narrative, entangled (like strands of a rope) by photographic sequences reflecting the thoughts and experiments of the French chronophotographer Étienne-Jules Marey.

Credits

Direction, screenplay, editing: Katja Pratschke, Gusztáv Hámos

Camera & photography: Gusztáv Hámos

Animation: Hanna Nordholt, Fritz Steingrobe

Cast: Lars Rudolph, Gusztáv Hámos, Oliver Elias, Ariella Hirshfeld, Mehdi Moinzadeh, Isidor Hámos, Momo Ekissi, Atau Hámos, and others

Funding support: Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, BKM, Film und Medien Stiftung NRW

Cities Territories & Occupation

Digital, 29.50 min, Eng. OV, 2019

Synopsis

Cities (Territories & Occupation) is part of the ongoing Sample Cities Project that includes two more films Hidden Cities (2012), Potential Space (2014 and the book "Sample Cities" (2014).

The source material for the films consists of sequences of photo works depicting essential situations of urban experiences revealing human and inhuman acts in a compact form. The cities in which the photos were created between 1974 and 2019 include Berlin, Hamburg, Budapest, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Istanbul, New York and Venice. Each individual photographic sequence already contains a concept, an order, a program within it. They are scores, notations of time and space, or in other words, to temporal-spatial or spatiotemporal sequences, which become experiments in perception in a cinematographic context.

Credits

Direction, screenplay, editing: Katja Pratschke, Gusztáv Hámos

Camera & photography: Gusztáv Hámos

Funding support: Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig Holstein

Voice-over: Matthew Burton

Music: Lina Ferencz, Ágnes Kamondy (vocals)

CV

As media artists and artistic researchers, Gusztáv Hámos and Katja Pratschke have been working together on the theory and practice of intermedial arts for 20 years. Thus, their artistic practice includes video, film, photography, interactive and site-specific installations, walk-in 360° cinema spaces, as well as the curation of exhibitions, symposia, film series, workshops, and publications. Since 2000, the duo has been experimenting with the still image in the cinematographic context – in the cinema as well as in the exhibition space.

Selected screenings and exhibitions recently include Ludwig Museum Budapest (Time Machine – A new selection from the collection of the Ludwig Museum, 2020-2023), Fotograf Gallery Prague (Of Walking on Ice, 2021), Ani Molnar Gallery Budapest (Construction, 2021), LOOP Barcelona (Video Art Fair, 2021) and Serralves Porto – Casa do Cinema ( Cinema and Photography: Spectral Visions 2021).