31/75 Asylum

Kurt Kren

16mm, 8 min

Austria 1975

“The camera with a sun shade is mounted on a heavy tripod in front of a window. Over 21 consecutive days the view outside is filmed from this perspective. The same three rolls of film (totalling 90 m) are used one after the other each day while the mask in front of the camera lens is changed every day. Each of the 21 masks made of black cardboard has four or five small rectanglular openings: all these openings together would clear the full view. For each take (one day) not only the mask is used, but sometimes the diaphragm is closed completely. This change differs from take to take. For instance, on the first day the mask is used from meters 1 to 21 then the diaphragm of the lens is closed until meter 28. The diaphragm is then again opened from meters 29 to 42, etc. For the 14th take however the diaphragm is only opened after 20 meters so that the change from open to closed diaphragm takes place at different meter values. The picture is changing constantly. Sometimes only a portion of the emulsion is exposed, the other area remains unexposed. At 21 meters the whole picture can be seen for the first time, consisting of all the openings of the masks. Towards the end of the film the unmasked view is shown for a short moment. Since the weather was changing throughout the time of shooting (March/April) the brightness of the picture is very different from take to take. Sometimes snow is seen on the ground. The transformations of a landscape within 21 days are shown simultaneously in a static image. The exchange of the masks does create movement, but not as a course of time towards a goal.” (Birgit Hein, 1977, http://www.sixpackfilm.com/en/catalogue/show/248)

“A meadow, a lake, the silhouette of a hill, trees. 21 days of the same view in Saarland. 21 days with five different cut-outs in a mask before the camera, which finally reveals a complete panorama. A landscape changes with the advancing seasons and becomes slowly delirious in its technical alienation.” (Claus Philipp, http://www.sixpackfilm.com/en/catalogue/show/248)

Kurt Kren, born 1929 in Vienna, died 1998 in Vienna.