[Frameworks] 24 March 2011 Seppo Renvall - Directors Lounge Screening at Z-Bar

[Klaus W. Eisenlohr]

Directors Lounge Screening at Z-Bar

Seppo Renvall
Times, Songs and Material
16mm films and video

Thursday, 24 March 2011
21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

"Never very good technical quality", "no sharp 
image", "no tripod", "everything kind of shaky", 
"mainly things that are not interesting", "no 
story", "no one idea" - when reading these quotes 
from Seppo Renvall on his own films, one could 
think he is practising some kind of 
anti-aesthetic, and on a superficial glimpse on 
his work, currently on show in an exhibition at 
Suomesta Galeria in Berlin, some people could 
even find proof to this idea. However, on closer 
look, his work does not fit any anti-aesthetic 
position, as Seppo Renvall does not want to cause 
offence or a scandal. Rather, his "negativity" is 
set against the grand gestures that predominate 
media, and the superlatives "most", "best" and 
"highest" required by the art scene. Theodor 
Adorno uses the term "negativity" in conjunction 
with resistance and connected with a countenance 
that does not allow reconciliation with the 
power, or the "wrong" social situation. Since 
then, times have changed and this society may not 
any more require a "life in alert"  (Walter 
Benjamin) but urges a life in agitation. Seppo's 
negativity seems to be more gentle, and seems to 
function more as a shield or as subversion 
against that constant state of arousal the media 
and the art world expect from the arts and the 
artists.

"If something interesting is happening, I 
possibly decide to shoot in the opposite 
direction", and often he finds something more 
subtle, more telling than the spectacle ahead. 
His sympathy goes to the little things in life, 
or maybe I should say: empathy. His films thus 
carry his empathy to the small situations in 
daily life. As a consequence, part of his work is 
made of home movies showing scenes with friends, 
family life, children and travel, shot and shown 
on 16mm.

The themes of his other films are quite divers 
but still connected with daily life, even if they 
seem to embrace the spectacle, like 
"Nonstoppampam". In this (in original) 3-channel 
work, an array of gunshots is fired in rapid 
succession. We possibly need to know the fact 
that these people shoot with a real gun for the 
first time in their life in order to see, what S. 
Renvall was mainly interested in: the awes, the 
hesitation, the threat and the surprise on the 
recoil forces reflected on their faces and in the 
gestures of people who enact "for real" something 
that is constantly happening on the TV-screen by 
protagonists we sympathise with. In the film 
"Iris and Nalle" (world premiere), a couple on a 
stage prepares for a S/M show, but "nothing 
happens". Seppo lets his audience linger in a 
state of expectation, while the gestures between 
man and woman are possibly more telling about 
their relation and the situation of being on 
stage than when watching the "real act".

Even when using found footage, or photographs 
from a book like in "The Price of Our Liberty", 
Seppo is interested in ordinary people. Giving a 
1/25 of a second for each portrait of soldiers 
killed in action during the winter war 1939-40 
(Finland against the Sowjet Union), depicted in a 
book of war heroes, thus making them superimpose 
on each other while each of them still remains 
visible, may newly rise the question of the price 
of such event. (The war is considered to have 
been a unifier after a time when Finland was 
divided between "white" and "red" factions.) More 
contemporary, "Drum Zymphony" shows architecture 
models, both virtual and 3-D, all of which 
represent built urban environment in Helsinki in 
the past decade, while playing on the sound track 
a composition made from live street recordings in 
Helsinki. The film, which makes the architecture 
models appear almost alive, still speaks about 
the discrepancy between the urban developments of 
the fastest growing city in Western Europe and 
the marginalised culture of street musicians, 
left outside in the cold. "Exotique" and 
"Yötähteni" talk about spaces of in-between, 
between light and shadow, night and day, 
unconscious and waking. Combined with the music 
of Aslak Christianson and others, many of these 
films, mostly edited on video, become songs, 
rhapsodies of life and a strong subversion of the 
mirror, which the TV screen seems to be for us.

Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr
With support from Suomesta Galerie, Berlin

http://www.directorslounge.net/
http://www.z-bar.de/
http://open.fixc.fi/public.php?nid_send=271&uid_send=15
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Suomesta-galerie/117934471569793

Programme:
16mm
Home Movies 4 2:00
Home Movies 1-3 7:00
Private Area 3:49

Video
The Price Of Our Liberty 08:09
Warm Front 5:24
Iris And Nalle 2:53
Planet Earth Encyclopedia 6:13
Dancing Shortly 1:13
Exotique 09:57
Dancing Shortly II 2:45
Drum Zymphony 21:15
Nonstop PamPam 4:20
Yötähteni  2:30
-- 

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)