film zeichnen

Hanna Schimek

film zeichnen

Drawings based on archival film material published in a series of four artist books

Austria 2015

Having been in various projects based on viewing and analyzing a large body of archival film material, Hanna Schimek used drawing as an instrument for research and internal communication, as an aid to visual memory and as a means for abstraction and observation.

“Similarly to the nature of film, drawing consists of contrasts between light and dark. It is created by a close coordination between the eye (the recipient), the brain (the transformer) and the hand (executor). Unlike the medium of photography, it allows pictorial content to be added, emphasised or omitted. [...] With these sketches drawn rapidly and intently on the editing table, I attempted to record the essential of the pictorial content – as well as the specific features of individual images, for instance the use of extraordinary light and shade, frame compositions or the physiognomies of the actors. [...] The four artist’s books present a selection of still drawings as an independent artistic medium, contrasting them with an atlas of images made up of film stills and associative photographs. It refers both to art and cultural history aspects and to media history aspects of the cultural pictorial memory, and reflects additional interrelations and an intensive visual involvement with cinematic material and its multifarious significances.” (Schimek 2015)

The Modern Magician (film zeichnen, part II). The Projector as Space of Action

Media transfer from film to still, from still to drawing, and from drawing to film

2-channel video installation, HD, color and black and white, silent, endless loops, left channel: 0:22 min, right channel: 5:46 min

Camera: Gustav Deutsch

Editing: Lydia Nsiah

Austria 2016

The departure point for the installation is a film taken from the database for the found footage film Film ist. a girl & a gun by Gustav Deutsch. An overhead projector serves as a tool to transform a freeze frame taken from its original movement in the film into a drawing. The drawing, like the film, represents an individual depiction of reality. The chosen sequence from the film The Modern Magician is exemplary for the content of this work: a reflection upon the capturing, disappearance, and transformation of (film) images.

Hanna Schimek, born in Vienna; lives and works in Vienna and Aegina.