8/64 Ana - Action Brus
With Ana - Aktion Brus, I saw that this was a good way of recording the whole action in single-frames. With the single frame shots, there was, of course, no cutting plan. Everything was done purely intuitively. There was not much to consider, and it all had to be done really quickly.
(Kurt Kren)
Kren´s first film of an "action" by Günter Brus. This three-minute film was far more akin to the American-style "happening" in that the content was not particularly extreme. It was built up from items such as broken bicycle parts, a nude model, pieces of furniture and these elements were then obscured or transformed by having a layer of paint thrown on them. Kren films short sequences from many different angles, using high-contrast black and white film to create an effect not unlike that of a painting by Robert Kline.
(Stephen Dwoskin)
Then comes Kren’s first film with Günter Brus – 8/64 Ana – Aktion Brus. The expressive style Kren is suddenly confronted with makes him depart from seriality and flash editing. His response is the “Great Abstraction”. Free gestural photography corresponds to Brus’s pathos; Kren pumps images of Tachist disintegration onto the film strip. While flash editing had made Mühl’s actions rage, the repetitive qualities had ensured that the “moving ornament” was still legible. The single-frame process Kren uses to record Brus’s action as if writing with his camera makes the image almost less than discernible.
(Peter Tscherkassky)