günther and loredana selichar
gt granturismo, 2001
video, 5’10’’, 16:9. dvd-edition: 15 + III, with a text by alexander horwath, espai lucas, valencia, 2002.
direction: günther and loredana selichar.
camera: martin putz.
special effects: martin reinhart, martin putz and wolfgang hemmer.
scientific advice: wolfgang hemmer.
animation: ronald anzenberger.
music: wolfgang mitterer and günther selichar.
graphics: christian hochmeister.
collection austrian film museum, vienna; collection museum der moderne, salzburg; collection tiroler landesmuseum ferdinandeum, innsbruck; i.a.
the video premiered at „la biennale di venezia/58.mostra internazionale d´arte cinematografica“ in the „nuovi territori“-section, venice 2001 and was shown in numerous exhibitions, film- and video festivals worldwide.
exhibition: fullframe festival, vienna/drive-in movie theater großenzersdorf, 2011.
© photos (from top to bottom): christian hochmeister; martin putz; martin putz; martin putz; martin putz; peter hoiß.
alexander horwath
press play. for a brief moment the picture stands still. before us lies a straight road surrounded by fields, trees along the wayside. at the same time a motor is heard, revving up quickly. then we take off, always looking straight ahead into the depths of the image that races by left and right. our gaze through the windshield is the center, and it seeks a single goal that secures its position: the other center, the vanishing point on the horizon. the world of the image is stretched between these two centers, but also a certain image of the world, which has been passed on in bourgeois society since the renaissance. the development of the central perspective has been long-lasting; despite all the objections of modernity, it has remained the dominant form of representing the world – in order to symbolically conquer and colonize it, to make it negotiable.
this kind of representation and world view is retained virtually in its pure form in video or computer games that send the viewer-player-actor on a race track, ski piste or airway through a world full of (surmountable) obstacles. granturismo begins like a naturalistic version of such a game.
… here, granturismo picks up with a second movement of reflection and irony. nature, which tends to congeal into a spectacle when seen through the car window (and the pseudo-window of the media), hits back in kamikaze-like fashion. disturbance signals barge into the transparent picture of the road and the landscape we traverse: mosquitos, flies and other insects crash into the windshield and leave their dirty traces behind. soon much of the picture surface is covered by colorfully glittering streaks of flesh and blood.
this is real death, but to such an extent that the “window to reality” actually becomes an impenetrable “screen”, screening out the impositions of the world – and at the same storing or “remembering” them in frozen pictorial form, like a war memorial does. it’s a “reality memorial”: the signals which disturb our seemingly realistic moving picture generate another (now static and seemingly unrealistic) picture, a painful, perhaps ominous representation, in which other, older media surfaces resonate. material film (mothlight). action painting (pollock). battle scene canvas.
… granturismo is a piece of insect theater, an animal allegory, a black comedy about the uninterrupted forward motion and standstills that characterize our machines and intellectual apparatuses. this comedy plays in a small world populated by mosquitoes and traveling warriors, in which the larger world holds its rehearsal: …
from: alexander horwath, storm riders, the landscapes of granturismo, a film by günther and loredana selichar, in: martin hochleitner (ed.), alexander horwath, marc ries, dieter ronte, marie röbl, birgit sonna: günther selichar. third eye. (linz | salzburg: oö.landesgalerie | fotohof edition 37, 2004).