INTRODUCTION |directorial approach | STATEMENT | SYNOPSIS | THE STRUCTURE | ABOUT THE CHARACTER | GENERAL INTENTION | Interdisciplinary facts | Theory and audience | <emballage> |

A story about the discoveries of a creature sent to earth to investigate human life -
A philosophical view on things around us in Western Society
Experimental Digital Media Production in English and German 48:45 min

NOW available on DVD

 

 

INTRODUCTION

The film project in its theoretical terms is basically an interdisciplinary discussion about object art, object theatre and installation, film and performance/improvisation by showcasing different stages of life, pictured in six scenes in connection to aphoristic talks about world and inner experiences. It could be called Real and Virtual Collage in which different techniques and medias result in the elements: OBJECT, VOICE, MOVEMENT and PLACE. It tells a story and documentation of a human female that thinks to be sent to earth to investigate human life. As a metaphor for people on the fringes of Western Society she tries or doesn't try to fit in. The film itself is the outcome of her so-called documentation: what did happen to her and which stages of life and transformations she finally experienced: from birth to growing up, from reproduction to death. It shows a path through these six stages that should provide a self-identification for the audience to bring up own experiences and intentions of struggling with individuality and mass phenomenon. Object-theatre methods are correlated to Multi Media, the connection between two art forms which already exist themselves in a multiplicity of art forms. Is the Object theatre a world between Fine Arts and Theatre, so is this a new style of negotiation - we are looking for - which opens up a new space of transferring time terms and artistic themes.
The very basis of this project exists because there is no strong distinction between material world and human world. Behind both worlds there is an intellectual principle. We wanted to create for the audience a personal, physical entrance into a changing situation that is the combination between FILM and OBJECT, PAST and PRESENCE, REALITY and VIRTUAL WORLD. ART IN PROCESS 2005

1. SCENE:
They will be born
appearance of the Blind Queen
The City - a Space/Place - place of the Unbelievers, the outcast, which have to suffer the City: lost place, where no more faith exists
Blind Queen / living creature on the fringes of society, feels attracted to the City - to die there once by getting crazy
masses of the City: everybody is alone, but not individual
Search for hope and happiness
Investigation about Western people's life and their passion/superficiality

2. SCENE:
They grow up
first identification with the human body and mind
feels captivated / tied up to a life she can't break out
Experience: man is a mind-limited person

3. SCENE:
They will stay for a while
the human being is educated to act human
faith / machine / new creation / contradictions / educated to cope with everything masterly
Control = Civilisation
Difficulties in adapting
Queen will now live a human life in consciousness
Finally recognizes mankind as something limited and mentally retarded

4. SCENE:
They reproduce themselves
discussion about the own body as reproducing organ
mother role - birth act similar to animal worlds, not manipulated, natural happening
critic on science and evolution/abnormality/breaking into natural actions without respect of life
retiring, water and birth - feels like a rebirth / rethinking

5. SCENE:
They dwindle away
recognizes own superiority
finds solutions for eternal search and failure as man
already accepting the end and fading - recognizing the soon end to come
man remains as a relief
man: recognized as a two-dimensional thinking being
man stays: a chaos in two-dimensionality, last revolting against human fate

6. SCENE:
Finally they die
getting a clear look on something higher
a review on life - in silence and satisfaction - now she found silence and harmony
found her peace with the female earth
martyr's clothes: holy man, everything ends in ease and eternal light
she knows now the variety of life and the original connection of men and nature

 

 

directorial approach by bello benischauer

I always try to set things into a dialogue with something else. Mostly it's Western Society in confrontation with nature or single human beings in their relationship with existing terms of living.
I am interested in fringe groups, in people, who are called outsiders in our society. People that try to act differently, try to change directions and live an individual life outside the masses, on the fringes of society.
My films focus on setting new points of view and giving fresh ideas about the already-best-known things we are surrounded with every day.
As Western Society looks so perfect on the outside it is very impressive what you find if you begin to dig. You become aware of so many interesting facts under the surface of a so-called well-designed and functioning culture.
I decided to let a creature raise its voice, which isn't originally human but well aware of the limitations of a human mind/body.
While this creature has to go though a whole life she learns how to handle things but also what it's like to struggle with life, feelings and individuality.
The Blind Queen serves as someone who watches different places from another point of view and documents about how to fit in Western Society standards by struggling with the experience of ageing and the inner self.
The film shows life from a special point of view and should give the audience the chance to rethink own experiences of life and attitudes, how people interact with nature and how and where they lose and lost control.
Sometimes we also experience being an outsider and sometimes in our struggle and suffering we forget what life can be and what opportunities we really have in Western Society. The Blind Queen finds out too late what a wonderful experience the stages of life could have been when keeping an open mind.

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STATEMENT by elisabeth m eitelberger

I have been working with bello benischauer on different projects including film and new media work for many years.
This is the first film project we combine different medias like in past installations and exhibitions. In this project we used Object Theatre methods for the acting parts and a theatrical language, included into situations that involve visual effects and overlapping images.
We finally brought all our experiences and abilities together to create an unusual and hopefully powerful work. Long time ago we both decided to set our point of view on mankind's relation to Western Society. We like to focus on fringe groups and everything that is different from standard terms.
For this project bello chose a very specific figure, a social outcast. Originally not human she has to handle difficult situations that are about her exploring of the inner self. But being aware of her universal consciousness she masters her human life very well.
Stepping into this person≠s role was for me a great chance for a self-identification in different life situations. In the end I really felt what she felt, especially standing at the Salt Lake preparing for the final step into eternal light. This - very emotional scene - has created a strong bond between me and the film-figure.
In the end I suppose the film is a very experimental journey through a human life and its six transformations from birth to death, not without experiencing birth as a very special form of being alive again.
My most important parts were the acting and the voice work of the text by bello benischauer. I designed the masks and the costumes, which I kept very simple. The close relationship in our work provided a very static and continuous way to satisfy the progress and at least the output of the main idea.

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SYNOPSIS

PROJECT X... six transformations of life
A story about the discoveries of a creature sent to earth to investigate human life -
A philosophical view on things around us in Western Society
Experimental Digital Media Production in English and German

What are the film and the scenes about: THE STORY- BASIC IDEA
The only character that appears in this experimental film as a kind of story teller is the Blind Queen, which is a creature from another world - sent as a human being - to investigate the earth, human behaviour and its relationship to nature and its inner self. It is a fiction story about a creature coming to earth that documents her feelings and experiences as a person.
The film shows different places and people passing by or in close-ups. The more outstanding people are, the more interested is the Blind Queen watching them. The story - if there is any - is pointed on Western Society and its lack of spirituality and understanding of inner worlds...
The setting is built up around places in Western Australia, City and landscapes, natural environments and industrial places. There is no specific time line. This experimental film has neither storyboard nor a clearly defined script with an action running through. The pictures that appear and the scenes are in a non-regular sequence and are following only the basic idea of these six stages of transformation in life. The film is produced in German and English with the choice of subtitles.

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THE STRUCTURE

six stages: the Blind Queen wears different masks to symbolise different transformations of life and ageing.
I scene - they will be born
II scene - they grow up
III scene - they will stay for a while
IV scene - they reproduce themselves
V scene - they dwindle away
VI scene - finally they die

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ABOUT THE CHARACTER

Why the name Blind Queen: blind, because she feels blind. She feels uncomfortable and like a prisoner in her restricted human body, which makes her feel unable to explain herself. In trying to copy others around her, she wears a mask to show how much her feelings are paralysed. She recognizes that people don't look like on their outside what they really are on their inside.
Why this creature sent to earth has to be female is the fact that the film wants the Blind Queen to explore life also from a mother's point of view. In carrying new life and giving birth to a human being she gets a very emotional insight into men's nature. To explore the outer behaviour of human beings she chooses different places to go.
Finally, when she recognizes that men in Western Society are more interested in themselves in a very superficial way, she begins to investigate her own feelings and tries to explain them in words. As a creature that originally has much more power over her feelings and her body, she struggles with her human body and wants to break out. Her whole trip to earth becomes a fight against this human body and its helplessness and limited mind. Finally, when she has explored birth and everything a human life is about, she wishes to be reborn to discover human life once again, as she recognizes that she struggled to much with her existence rather than concentrating aon the beauty of life and its speciality, and the gift to grow and choose different ways of life and existence. Her last breath on earth brings back the whole film in her mind. All the expectations she once had, and all her experiences happen again in her mind's eye. This is the point where she knows how rich and broad the human mind can be, she honours her life for the first time and is ready to go wherever this should be...

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GENERAL INTENTION

The film shows life from a special point of view and should give the audience the chance to rethink own experiences of life and attitudes, how people interact with nature and how and where they lose and lost control.
Sometimes we also experience being an outsider and sometimes in our struggle and suffering we forget what life can be and what opportunities we really have in Western Society. The Blind Queen finds out too late what a wonderful experience the stages of life could have been when keeping an open mind...

Basically it is a discussion about Western Society, about differences and cultural identities between people, focussing on modern movements inspired by nature and urban settings; a story about changing the view about things in society, nature and life in general. It focuses on slow and fast movements by replacing points of view and by separating nature from the human being. It also features short cuts and profiles of facing the beauty temples of Western Society.
The Blind Queen serves as someone who watches different places from another point of view and documents about how to fit in Western Society standards by struggling with the experience of ageing and the inner self.

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Interdisciplinary facts

ABOUT THE PROJECT as INSTALLATION

bello benischauer
film, video work and installation
elisabeth m eitelberger
acting, costumes and objects + installation design

On the way to medial production - we respond to terms of object-theatre and video art:

Object-theatre methods are correlated to Multi Media, the connection between two art forms which already exist themselves in a multiplicity of art forms.
Is the Object theatre a world between Fine Arts and Theatre, so is this a new style of negotiation - we are looking for - which opens up a new space of transferring time terms and artistic themes.

What the project is about
The project, called Project X... six transformations of life, is an interdisciplinary project including object art, object theatre and installation, film and performing/improvisation by showcasing six different stages of life, pictured in six video installations in connection and dialogue to objects (masks, utensils, costumes) that also occur in the film sequences, and a photo documentation in form of a reminding board.
It tells a story and is a documentation of a female human being who thinks she has been sent to earth to investigate human life in Western Society. This figure is a metaphor for people on the outside that try or don't try to fit in Western Society terms. The video installation is the outcome of her documentation: what happens to her and which stages of life and transformations she finally experienced: from birth to growing up, from reproduction to death.

The video installation, evolving out of the finished work, can show a path through six stages and transformations of life in a closed in room installation. The end product should provide a self-identification for the audience to bring up own experiences and intentions of struggling with identity, individuality and mass phenomenon.

A comparison
The documentation of this figure's life and impressions about the world she lives/lived in can be compared to the life of an unknown artist, discovered after his death. The audience, visiting an exhibition of this artist, will maybe get confronted with letters, various sketches and notes and his artwork: paintings, objects, etc., sometimes photos. The life of this person will now be interesting in any of its ways and will live on, even if the physical person behind this document of artistic expression is already gone...

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Theory and audience

The main focus is the presence of the acting film-figure in the place based on and documented through texts, photos, her masks and costumes. Special interest is the relation between affective form of expression and abstracting reduction in composition to the form.
The very basis of this project exists because there is no strong distinction between material world and human world. Behind both worlds there is an intellectual principle. We want to create for the audience a personal, physical entrance into a changing situation that is the combination between FILM and OBJECT, PAST and PRESENCE, REALITY and VIRTUAL WORLD.

We were always interested in a connection between visual (sculpture, painting and installation) and dramatic techniques (acting, dance, etc.)
So we bordered on the theatre with objects and after that in the combination to video art inspired by primitive archaic art and ritual art forms of expression. Therefore we are mostly interested in the polarity between the living human being and the artistic formed material, as we call it THE OBJECT (anaylsed below).
Going beyond the single medias and creating a new space for expression was the plan for a new project that should include a human figure as its main focus, as its main OBJECT surrounded by other objects and different spaces.

To realise an idea about something that was growing in each of us for a long time brought us further in creating work together.
We both have a history in Fine Arts. Besides we worked in different media for a long time as well: Film (video work, filming, etc) and Theatre (performance/improvisation and object theatre) in theory and practice.

With this project we realise the step into a new direction correlated to exiting contemporary art practices and going beyond them by finding a new process and result in our own work.

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<emballage>

We reach a new form of interpreting things, things that have to do with time and men. "In nothing man is more interested than in himself" says an important European theorist in an essay about object theatre. "He identifies even in fantastic stories animals as human like, even the whole world as something he only could watch through himself. Which play does not deal with or about that which affects men?"
Object theatre has been created in Europe from where it took its way to many other countries in the world. This new theatre form makes the object alive and usually the audience automatically identifies it with a human being.
Our project could be called Real and Virtual Collage, in which different techniques and medias result in the elements: OBJECT (as a fetish, as social mask, etc.), VOICE, MOVEMENT and PLACE.

We build a "DOCUMENTARY PACKAGE" for the audience:
The project is oriented to the word "emballage", (French, used for theatre terms in relation to object theatre, means the wrapping or surrounding of a thing) which brings it to the point.
This word contains a huge number of various artistic activities.
<emballage> is acting and activity which are naturally connected to THE OBJECT. The development itself carries a very human need and indeed a human passion of saving, separating, bringing to life, transmitting, but also the taste of the unknown and mystery.
Provocative presentation surrounded by performing acting is not only the object any more but also the place, the media and the body itself. The performing field, created out of this situation isn't just simply object theatre anymore; more than that it is the UNNAMED and its <emballage> is the object, body, place and media.
Our project is trying to dip into a discourse to investigate this special performing field. Developments of contemporary art and in front of all multi media-changes and possibilities have brought up the necessity to redefine definitions and terms. Through a discussion about resulting questions we designed an idea about this project to find a new line and a new connection to the audience.

The different medias and their importance for this project:
The PLACE/SPACE
In work that is connected to specific places, a magnetic effect is based on the place. The place will always be the factor that leads the work into a certain direction. But the place/space is a very complex matter.
The BODY
We all have a different understanding of what a body is. On the one hand the body is seen as material and tool, for example to show a course of movements; on the other hand he transforms himself more and more from the material to a changing art object.
The OBJECT
Through our individual and collective experiences the OBJECT has a special meaning. Art helps to understand and to make things manageable. To get involved into the characteristics, the possibilities of movements and the physical presence of a thing make THE OBJECT, which is set into a dialogue with the acting subject.
Object art as a physical representation and form is changing in post-modern times from the real thing to the hyper-real entities of computer and information-society.
Things that you could touch once are getting physically untouchable. Our project will stand between those two worlds and tries to find a new line between them to make things more real. Objects don't appear only in the video, they are touchable things around the place.
But the human being in the video is just an image in the end and doesn't appear as a real one, because it is already gone and the film is the only document of her past existence.
The MEDIA
Whereas performance- and video art are connected, as there was video art from the beginning, in seems theatre and film do not exist in such a friendly competitive coexistence any more...
This project is involving those medias in one act and should bring them closer to the audience as REAL and UNREAL HAPPENINGS in one ROOM OF EXPERIENCE.

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