4 minutes 15 seconds, color, sound, 16mm

Germany 1999

“Blutrausch establishes a direct link between the human body and the cinematic apparatus. Fleisch applied blood – partly from a self-inflicted wound and partly from a sample – over the entire filmstrip. At times he would spread it on with his fingers or a cotton swab, then let it trickle onto the celluloid or press a single frame against a wound, in order to leave an imprint. The drying blood rapidly formed a series of shifting patterns in varying hues of brown, and whose bursting surfaces branched out into a web of fine lines. On the optical soundtrack the traces of blood are heard as a rustle and crackle. ‘I liked the sound it made and the concept of having the projector interpret my blood audio-visually rather than only visually,’ explains the artist” (Jutz  2016: 416).

Thorsten Fleisch, born in 1972 in Koblenz, lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Reference

Gabriele Jutz, “Audio-Visual Aesthetics in Contemporary Experimental Film,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Western Art, ed. Yael Kaduri (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 397–425.

Link

http://fleischfilm.com