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Das Haus

Aglaia Konrad

16mm transferred to video, color, 4:3, no sound, BE/AT, 2014, 21’40”

Das Haus is a work that deepens the exploration of sculptural architecture that Aglaia Konrad conducted with the series of 16mm films Concrete and Samples. Shot in a house designed by architect Juliaan Lampens in Sint-Martens-Latem (Belgium), the film resumes the artist’s interest on the possibilities of the cinematic medium to generate –rather than capture – an architectural experience. An experience which, in this film, surpasses the visual to mobilize bodily perception and even desire.

Konrad’s editing carefully measures the doses of perceptual information it provides to our orientation drive in a process that departs from an initial willingness to orient oneself towards the pleasure of surrendering to disorientation and fragmentation. A disorientation that could be called “perverse” in the sense that Freud bestowed to the word –perverse pleasures are those which linger in the detour; in the resistance to result in a productive goal– insofar as the film replaces the production of a representation of space in favour of perceptive defamiliarization and tactile pleasure.

Architecture and film are constantly looking at each other in a piece in which “angle”, “transition”, “cut”, “sequence”, “frame”, “ joint”, “ fold “ and “rhythm” are notions that are spread from one discipline to the other as if the camera and editing would be reading the space as a composition score.
There are two architectural comparisons that are often applied to filmmaking: the idea of cinema as a “window” and as “mirror”. Das Haus, entangles and complicates those comparisons by treating windows as interfaces that blur the inside and outside and whose transparency acquires materiality, and by using mirrors as devices that disrupt form pushing it to a state of potentiality.

In Das Haus the screen is no longer a window but rather a skin: for it is a body interface, a tactile surface and a membrane that is neither safe nor transparent because it reveals its inner cinematic compositional strategies. (Anna Manubens)

Image Sébastien Koeppel
Editing Aglaia Konrad
Produced by Auguste Orts
Co-produced by Courtisane
With the support of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund, Netwerk / center for contemporary art, Aalst, UGent (Vakgroep Architectuur & Stedenbouw, Afdeling Communicatie, Afdeling Facilitair Bureau), LUCA School of Arts, vzw Juliaan Lampens, Fotohof Salzburg, Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen

Das Haus has been on display at:

Filmplateau Ghent, (BE) Tuesday, Oct 29 2019 Sõprus cinema Tallinn, (LT) Wednesday, Sep 27 2017 Filmcasino Vienna, (AT) Sunday, Apr 10 2016 von Bartha Basel, (CH) Jan 30–Mar 26 2016 Les Rencontres Internationales Berlin, (DE) Thursday, Jun 25 2015 Video Ex Zurich, (CH) Thursday, May 28 2015 Les Rencontres Internationales Paris, (FR) Friday, Dec 5 2014 Budascoop Kortrijk, (BE) Thursday, Oct 23 2014 Cinematek Brussel, (BE) Monday, Oct 20 2014 Cinematek Brussel, (BE) Friday, Oct 17 2014 Cinematek Brussel, (BE) Thursday, Oct 16 2014 Fotohof Salzburg, (AT) Jul 25–Sep 13 2014 Courtisane Gent, (BE) Sunday, Apr 6 2014 Netwerk Aalst, (BE) Apr 5–Jun 15 2014