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Love, lust and passion, violence, loss and death are the great cinematic motifs. Through a carefully calculated dramaturgy of emotions, they seduce the viewer into being swept away by the plot. Guest curator of Haus der Kunst Gürsoy Doğtaş has selected twelve films from the Sammlung Goetz that explore the seduction mechanisms of narrative cinema.
With Keren Cytter, Jeanne Faust, Annika Larsson, Shahryar Nashat and Aïda Ruilova.
The videos by the five artists in the eighth collaborative exhibition with Haus der Kunst build on familiar cinematic genres, such as soft porn, horror and splatter films, yet do not follow a linear plot. Using abrupt cuts, surprising twists and unusual perspectives, they undermine the viewing habits of passionate movie audiences.
With her video life like, artist Aïda Ruilova pays tribute to the French horror film director, Jean Rollin, who lies pale and rigid on his deathbed. A young woman initially mourns the old man, but then begins to abuse him with her caresses and sexual affronts. In Pink Ball, Annika Larsson portrays a homoerotic power play over a stranded and naked man, and in his video Laterally Yours, 154 Days, Shahryar Nashat records how a prisoner comes to terms with his hopeless situation.
“The presented videos reduce great emotions to brief fragments of visual pleasure, and shatter the intimate relationship between the viewer and the film’s text”, explains Gürsoy Doğtaş, “so that the promise of pleasure, control and power fails to materialize.”
Curated by Gürsoy Doğtaş
