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Yours, KOW

Untitled (Two Guys), 2008

video installation

GermanEnglish

Untitled [“Two Guys“] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/ playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence –a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [“Two Guys“] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a “globalized society“ and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.

Untitled [“Two Guys“] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/ playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence –a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [“Two Guys“] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a “globalized society“ and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.

GermanEnglish

HD-video 16:9, color, stereo, 7 min

Cast: Sami Moss Mardina, Yeisen Acosta Medina
Cinematograpy: Matthias Biber
Montage: Mario Pfeifer
Sound design: Thomas Wallmann
Light design: Manuel Kinzer
Produced by Jakob Schillinger, Mario Pfeifer [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
Funded by KulturAllianzen, Interflugs Berlin, Asta Berlin

© 2008 Germany

HD-video 16:9, color, stereo, 7 min

Cast: Sami Moss Mardina, Yeisen Acosta Medina
Cinematograpy: Matthias Biber
Montage: Mario Pfeifer
Sound design: Thomas Wallmann
Light design: Manuel Kinzer
Produced by Jakob Schillinger, Mario Pfeifer [blackboardfilms]
Conceived by Mario Pfeifer
Funded by KulturAllianzen, Interflugs Berlin, Asta Berlin

© 2008 Germany

Mario Pfeifer, Untitled (Two Guys), 2008, HD-Video, 19:9, color, stereo (film still)
Mario Pfeifer, Untitled (Two Guys), 2008, HD-Video, 19:9, color, stereo (film still)
Mario Pfeifer, Untitled (Two Guys), 2008, HD-Video, 19:9, color, stereo (film still)
Mario Pfeifer, Untitled (Two Guys), 2008, HD-Video, 19:9, color, stereo (film still)
Mario Pfeifer, Untitled (Two Guys), 2008, HD-Video, 19:9, color, stereo (film still)
Mario Pfeifer, Untitled (Two Guys), 2008, HD-Video, 19:9, color, stereo (film still)
Mario Pfeifer, Installation view: Antirepresentationalism 3, Issures of Empathy, Conceptual and Socially oriented Art in Leipzig 1997-2009, Nov 28, 2009 - Jan 15, 2010
Mario Pfeifer, Untitled (Two Guys), 2011, Inkjet print, plexiglass, 34 x 24 x 2.8 cm
GermanEnglish

HINTERHOF OFFSPACE, BASEL (Group), 2012
NASSAUISCHER KUNSTVEREIN, WIESBADEN, 2011
MULHOUSE BIENNALE (Group), 2010
KOW (Group), 2010

GermanEnglish

DARKLIGHT FESTIVAL, DUBLIN, 2012
LES RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES, BERLIN, MADRID, 2010
VIDEOART AT MIDNIGHT #16, KINO BABYLON, BERLIN, 2010

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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".



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