Past Exhibitions
Phoenix Tapes
05 December 2007 - 03 February 2008 at the Sigmund Freud Museum
The Sigmund Freud Museum is presenting the installation "Phoenix Tapes" by Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller. Six video monitors show sequences from films by Alfred Hitchcock involving recurrent motifs in his work.
From forty well-known films, the German artists distill details that at first seem fully insignificant, using them to develop a six-part encyclopedia of obsessions. By showing sets, close-ups of objects and little gestures as well as encounters between characters who never met in the original Hitchcock films, the installation develops a parallel film, which in the style of a thriller builds up tension and steers toward a tragic end. Girardet and Müller's translation exposes Hitchcock's films to the tradition of "found footage" as it developed in experimental film.
he exhibition has been developed in cooperation with the Austrian Film Museum, which is presenting a special focus on Alfred Hitchcock beginning on 1 December. On 24 January 2008, the Sigmund Freud Foundation has invited English film scholar Laura Mulvey to present a lecture at the Film Museum. It will deal with Hitchcock's psychoanalytic scenarios and provide a theoretical bridge between the work of these two institutions.
The Artists
Christoph Girardet, born in 1966 in Langenhagen, has been working as a video artist since 1989. Participation in numerous group shows at institutions such as P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York and Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center; solo shows at Kunstverein Hannover and Kunsthalle Bielefeld et al.
Matthias Müller, born in 1961 in Bielefeld, has since 1980 produced numerous films and videos that have been shown at various international festivals. Participations in group shows at Centre Georges Pompidou, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago et al.; solo shows at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and Tate Modern. Since 2003 he has been Professor of Experimental Film at the Akademie der Medienkunst in Cologne.
Focus on Alfred Hitchcock in the Austrian Film Museum