[Frameworks] Relations and Abstractions - Max Hattler - Saturday DL at Z-Bar

[Klaus W. Eisenlohr]

Directors Lounge Screening at Z-Bar

Saturday, 08 Jan 2011
21:00
Relations and Abstractions
Films by
Max Hattler

Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte


Relations and Abstractions - Max Hattler

Max Hattler surprises his audience with the 
gripping force of his abstracted images, combined 
with sounds he often composes for his own films. 
The German media artist and animator lives in 
London and has made a real leap into the media 
art and festival scene since he graduated from 
the Royal College of Art in 2005. A programme of 
his films was already presented at Directors 
Lounge 2010, and we are happy to present his new 
programme this month, prior to our festival in 
February.

In Germany, animation is not being considered as 
a proper art field, and similar to graphic arts 
it is often seen as "angewandte Kunst" i.e. 
craftsmanship or applied arts, mostly feeding the 
film industry. The field of animation can be 
quite broad, from animations from pencil 
drawings, paper-cut-outs, stop-motion, 3D 
animation, Flash animation and live generated 
computer graphics. Max Hattler seems to embrace 
them all, and his work could be seen as happy 
eclecticism, as post-modern art practice. In 
Aanaatt (2008) he is using stop-motion animation, 
Drift (2007) is a combination of close-up 
photography of skin combined with compositing and 
Flash animation, Heaven and Hell (2010) are 
computer generated graphic animation loops, 
Everything Turns (2004) has been drawn directly 
into the computer, and Ladyscraper: Cheese 
Burgers (2011) looks like it was made with live 
VJ tools.

Looking closer into Max's work, however, we 
realize that his art is in no way about 
eclecticism or appropriation. The artist does 
make his mark with genuine image composition, and 
even if his use of different media tools is 
astonishingly varied, there is something common 
in most of his films, a kind of surplus, or 
plenitude that can be almost overwhelming. 
Animation, this tedious and time-consuming 
technique (also true in the digital age) usually 
leads to reduction (unless it is made by big 
teams and studios such as Pixar) often resulting 
in a kind of artistic beauty of scarcity. Not 
with Max Hattler, though! Even if animation 
techniques lead him to quite abstracted forms, 
they are not abstract. And the reduced, 
abstracted forms become symbols again, which 
often multiply, break apart in smaller image 
units, still animated, and again accumulate, 
congregate to larger units, to super-structures. 
Amazingly, this often happens with a chuckle, a 
political twist or black humour.

We are very much looking forward to this film 
night with Max Hattler, who will be available for 
Q&A after the show.
(curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr)


Artist Link:
http://www.maxhattler.com/
http://www.facebook.com/maxhattler.artistpage

More infos:
http://www.directorslounge.net
http://www.richfilm.de/filmUpload/1-framesMaxHattler.html
http://directorsloungenews.tumblr.com/post/2602007203/max-hattler

Z-Bar
http://www.z-bar.de


*¨°¨* AND a friendly reminder: Open Call - Directors Lounge wants you!
Please submit your film
http://directorslounge.tumblr.com/tagged/call_for_submission *¨°¨*


-- 

Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Osnabrücker Str. 25, D-10589 Berlin, Germany



email:			klaus at richfilm.de
and film production:		http://www.richfilm.de


phone:			int.- 49 - 30 - 3409 5343 (BERLIN)
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