Dissolution Prologue (Extended Version)
The central leitmotif investigated by Siegfried A. Fruhauf in his artistic works concerns the nature of film, its very essence. In Dissolution Prologue (Extended Version), this guiding principle leads to associated questions in terms of the medium's limitations and, as the title suggests, their dissolution: metaphorically, this concerns the idea of the curtain as emblematic of the cinematic and its veil of illusion that never conclusively closes but rather relentlessly opens. The visual composition signals "The show must go on," its conceptual linchpin once again pivoting on the idea of absolute film within the Fruhaufian reference system of film history and cognitive theory. The "veil" of the prologue concretely conveys the introduction of analog film footage as it powerfully pulls us into a contrastive interplay of horizontal and vertical lines expanding and approaching one another in sonorous accord with a pure sinus tone variation. The film frame is continually filled by surfaces resulting from emerging and retreating lines. A kind of blink, what is shown continually disappears only to reveal the next visual layer which is again wiped away. A blue gray analog texture flickers, grain and scratches lend an optical rhythm and impression of depth atop which minimizing lines converge in a cross. The frame expands toward the middle of the film – reminiscent of Morgan Fisher's Screening Room – to include two pulsing strips of pure digital light flanking the left and right sides of the frame. With Kazimir Malevich's Black Square (1915) in view and Blaise Pascal’s 1647 vacuum test arrangement in mind, Fruhauf probes experimental film in the pure form of an experiment and transforms it into visual music. (Katharina Müller)
Translation: Eve Heller
Dissolution Prologue (Extended Version)
2020
Austria
6 min