Five films and two performance works by Marcus Bergner

Thursday, 19th September, 7:30pm

2 Kerr Street, Fitzroy VIC 3065

Tickets $7 on the door

AFW are proud to present a rare evening of films and performances by the Australian-born interdisciplinary artist Marcus Bergner, inncluding a collaboration with Myriam Van Imschoot. Working at the cross-sections of expanded practice, "Bergner’s artworks and related research has been in shifting and rethinking points of intersection that operate between/within the worlds of visual art, literature, art history, film, and performance". Since leaving 16mm film-making behind, Bergner formed one half of a sound poetry duo with Myriam Van Imschoot in Brussels, working across video, performance and sound installation on projects, often in touring and site-specific scenarios. This presentation is one of two collaborative events organised in Melbourne for 2019.

By order of presentation --

‘One Word’ A live performance by the filmmaker first performed in Rotterdam 2018 (10mins)

Etrusco Me. (made with Marie Hoy), 16mm, 5mins, sound, 1984. Originally made as the backdrop for a performance by the singer and musician, Marie Hoy. Inspired by seeing a collection of Etruscan pottery in Rome. Music by Ollie Olsen.

A Historic Disturbance of Memory. 16mm , 17 mins, silent, 1987. (projected at 18FPS). One of a series of 16mm and 35mm films made over ten years where ‘the script’ is written directly onto the film surface. Includes home processing and direct to film surface writing and drawing techniques. ‘Memory of the present’ via Charlemagne’s France of 800 AD, and the film’s modus operandi might be summed up via this line by the poet Giorgio Caproni: “ I returned there, where I had never been, nothing has changed from how it wasn’t.”

Tales From Vienna Hoods. 16mm, 20 mins, sound, 1989. The Rorschach inkblot technique, and its various misuses and precursors, forms the basis for this animated waltz of after-image and stereoscopic effects. Made up of thousands of original ink drawings with the soundtrack including sound poetry from the Czech artist Ladislav Novák and readings from inkblot tests given to USA soldiers en-mass during WW2. Kurt Kren after seeing this film exclaimed: “Fantastic! It brought back many memories from my Viennese youth."

Angledozer 16mm, 17mins, sound, 1996. Optically printed found and home movie footage. Over 300 educational and training film prints culled from the RMIT library are compressed and wrestled into an emblematically luminous archive of odd sorts. Soundtrack includes Marisa Stirpe on Jaw harp and vocals.

A live performance by the filmmaker and Myriam Van Imschoot (5mins)

Musical Four Letters. 16mm, 5mins, sound, 1989. An OULIPO type writing exercise in which every four-letter-word having anything to do with sound or music (including swear words) are written directly onto de-collaged fragments from a 1940s Mexican film musical.