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Thomas KÖNER : Le manifeste du futurisme | Multimedia concert | 0:50:00 | Germany | 2009 [•]
Première en France. Opéra numérique. Version de concert

Thomas Köner was born in 1965. He is a media artist working with audiovisual installations, sound, video, photography, net art and live performances. His work is part of the collections of numerous significant art museums. Awards include: Golden Nica, Prix Ars Electronica 2004, Transmediale Award 2005, Golden Tiger Cub, Filmfestival Rotterdam, in 2005.

Us
A montage interweaving pre-existing and fabricated images, which creates a lyrical anxiousness, from a humanism which is vibrant, where glances follow faces, where the Armenian people seem to resist all wounds, and trials which remind us in our everyday lives of their tenor : dramatic with a burial, comic and tragic at the same time - as a delivery tricycle driver disappears into the fumes of the vehicle preceding him, deeply moving during that sequence in which we all reunite, where men and women embrace each other, holding one another until it becomes dizzying. From the gaze of a child’s face, a primitive face, a face full of pain, the repetition of which emphasizes an iron will to exchange, to recognize and to find universal peace.

Our time
We still have processions, for the glory of “our time”, still this impression of an unsaid threat, of a rumor that is manifest but not incarnated. We will not forget our time, as it is the time of genocide and conquests, the time of vanity and superficiality: men are forced to put their pretentions to the test. They will fight against nature’s determinism, fabricate their legacy through the travesties they own, through intimidating protocol, audacity and stubbornness, only to leave behind a shrouded testimony consisting of but a handful of images which endlessly reiterate the absurdity of the instinctive and totalitarian vocation to occupy and colonize the world.

The land of men
“The theme here is the never-ending discovery of beauty in the world, of which man becomes conscious in his work and in his life, and develops in the structure of the big city, as it is manifest throughout the work day. This film begins and ends on the rotating sculpture by Rodin : Le Penseur. This well known sculpture has long time since become the symbol of the inalterable expression of human thought.” (Artavazd Pelechian, Mon cinéma Erevan : 1988).

At the beginning
This film commemorates the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution (1917). In this film, Pelechian experiments with editing techniques that he will continue to develop in his future films, notably using pre-existing images, alternating past, present and future – of which the backbone forms a symbolic representation that transcends the history of Russia. We observe movements of revolt, processions, emblematic figures; we become acquainted with images of explosions, cadavers, or moving machines, in the rhythmic flowing motion that is particular to Pelechain.