Presentation Wednesday 27.3.2019 – 2pm
KDM Class – Lehargasse 8, 2nd floor 1060 Vienna
Christiana Perschon: “Every encounter with an image, every interaction searches for its own form. My work is based on dialogue and empathy: exploring narratives, gestures, faces and historical traces in archival footage like amateur films, carrying out oral history interviews and collaborating with female artists of an older generation. Exchange is a feminist strategy and crucial to my understanding of filmmaking. Looking through the lens of my camera offers a multisensual space and different ways of building a relationship. It is not a one way encounter, but an act of getting to know each other: I see you seeing me instead of looking at you. My camera acts as the receiver of the gaze in a setting where interaction defines the imagery. Empathy is a political tool in this process avoiding a single point of view and allowing mutual seeing and being seen. My collaborations depend on trust in the imaginary and resonance, on what is about to evolve out of dialogue and focus. In class I want to talk about my latest film: She is the other gaze (2018, 90 min) and two related short films: Ghost Copy (2016, 2 min), Double 8 (2016, 3 min).”
She is the other gaze (2018, 90 min, Viennale’18, Verleih: Filmgarten, Kinostart 3.Mai 2019)
In their works, the feminist artists Renate Bertlmann, Karin Mack, Linda Christanell, Margot Pilz, and Lore Heuermann opposed the male power structures of the 1970s. Christiana Perschon’s camera, as an apparatus placed in between, consistently fathoms new forms for transferring the earlier works into the medium of film, and setting them in motion. With Sie ist der andere Blick, the filmmaker gives rise to a constellation-based space for thought on artistic strategies of appropriation. (Jana Koch, Diagonale ’19)
Christiana Perschon is an artist and filmmaker based in Vienna. She completed her studies in Art and Digital Media/Film at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She worked several years for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), Austrian Audiovisual Archive (Österreichische Mediathek), as a research associate at Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for History and Society and as a curator at Austrian Filmmuseum (Barbara Hammer Retrospektive 2018). She is a member of Golden Pixel Cooperative. Perschon’s work has received several awards and grants (Theodor Körner Preis 2018, Best Austrian Short Film/Vienna Shorts 2014) and has been shown at venues such as Blickle Kino Belvedere 21, mumok Kino, Viennale (AT), Diagonale (AT), Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (DE), Jihlava IDFF (CZ), Visions du Réel (CH), Edinburgh International Film Festival (UK), Cork Film Festival (IRL).