Installation for Weserburg, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Bremen
Exhibition Design by Devin Dailey
Typography by Melanie Glass
Installation Documentation by Jens Weyers
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
© 2010 Germany
CODE UNKNOWN [Re_Sync], Notes on a film excerpt, 2010
installation
GermanEnglish
The installation was first conceived for Weserburg, Museum für moderne Kunst Bremen. It analyses a key scene in Michael Haneke‘s film CODE INCONNUE (2000), in which another film is dubbed by the actors Juliette Binoche and Thierry Neuvic. Mario Pfeifer re-transfers this scene into an adapted script, giving the moving images a quasi-a-priori source text. This German version script–with an additional fictional establishing shot and end sequence referring to Haneke’s usual strategies of opening and ending a film–is mounted full frame on the exhibition walls in a white cube setting. Within these wall texts ten posters display quotations by Michael Haneke–questions that he had drafted and published before the production of the film. In the following room, Haneke‘s film excerpts in the original French version with German subtitles are screened in a continuously loop. While the scene plays forward in normal speed first, it is later re-winded with high speed to start again. The image quality is rather poor indicating the image appropriation and carries a decoding software symbol referring to user practices of bootlegging films through freeware applications. (Text: Mario Pfeifer)
The installation was first conceived for Weserburg, Museum für moderne Kunst Bremen. It analyses a key scene in Michael Haneke‘s film CODE INCONNUE (2000), in which another film is dubbed by the actors Juliette Binoche and Thierry Neuvic. Mario Pfeifer re-transfers this scene into an adapted script, giving the moving images a quasi-a-priori source text. This German version script–with an additional fictional establishing shot and end sequence referring to Haneke’s usual strategies of opening and ending a film–is mounted full frame on the exhibition walls in a white cube setting. Within these wall texts ten posters display quotations by Michael Haneke–questions that he had drafted and published before the production of the film. In the following room, Haneke‘s film excerpts in the original French version with German subtitles are screened in a continuously loop. While the scene plays forward in normal speed first, it is later re-winded with high speed to start again. The image quality is rather poor indicating the image appropriation and carries a decoding software symbol referring to user practices of bootlegging films through freeware applications. (Text: Mario Pfeifer)
WESERBURG MUSEUM FÜR MODERNE KUNST, BREMEN (Group), 2010
Mario Pfeifer
Mario Pfeifer was born in 1981 in Dresden, Germany. His work explores representational structures and conventions in the medium of film, in locations ranging from Mumbai to California to the Western Sahara. Conceiving each project out of a specific cultural situation, he researches social-political backgrounds and weaves further cross-cultural art historical, filmic and political references into a richly layered practice, ranging from film and video installations to photographs and text installations. Often, Pfeifer collaborates on publications that reconsider these projects, offering research materials and critical investigations by writers and thinkers of related fields, concerning issues suggested in his projects for a wider social-political discussion. After his studies in Leipzig (HGB) and Berlin (UDK), Pfeifer graduates from Willem de Rooij's class at Städelschule Frankfurt in 2008. He is a Fulbright fellow in Los Angeles (California Institute of the Arts) in 2008/09. Further grants and projects lead him to Bangkok, Mumbai, Marrakesh, Beirut, Tierra del Fuego, Santiago de Chile, and New York. Mario participated in the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018), the 11th Bienal do Mercosul (2017), the 3° Montevideo Bienal (2016) as well as the 4th Marrakesh Biennal (2012). Survey exhibitions took place in 2016 at the GfZK Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig and in 2019 at The Power Plant Toronto. In 2019 IDFA commissioned the first performance work AGAIN – Live which premiered at Amsterdam's Pakhuis de Zwijger. Pfeifer lives in Berlin and Dresden. In 2023 Pfeifer was awarded the Hessian Film- and Cinema award in the categorie "Best Short Film" for "Zelle 5 - Eine Rekonstruktion".
- Anna Boghiguian
- Candice Breitz
- Marco A. Castillo
- CATPC
- Alice Creischer
- Chto Delat
- Clegg & Guttmann
- Eugenio Dittborn
- Heinrich Dunst
- Anna Ehrenstein
- León Ferrari
- Peter Friedl
- Sophie Gogl
- Barbara Hammer
- Ramon Haze
- Hiwa K
- Simon Lehner
- Renzo Martens
- Chris Martin
- Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
- Oswald Oberhuber
- Mario Pfeifer
- Dierk Schmidt
- Santiago Sierra
- Michael E. Smith
- Franz Erhard Walther
- Clemens von Wedemeyer
- Tobias Zielony