Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Katharina Gruzei combines a sociopolitical issue and a precise formal concept, which is rare in experimental film. Inspired by the Lumière brothers? first film, La sortie de l?usine Lumière à Lyon, which shows a large number of workers leaving their factory?s gate, Gruzei begins in the interior, in a passageway (made to seem incredibly long by the editing) that emerges from the darkness. More and more of them walk down the dark, flickering hallway. By these scenes the weirdness of the space and the menacing quality of a mass of people who could form a resistance movement becomes increasingly evident. All relevant questions concerning the on-the-job reality experienced by these workers, most of whom are women, can be formulated by means of association: Is it nighttime when they leave the factory? What kind of work do they have to do? What do female laborers earn these days? How long does it take them to get home from this monstrous factory, and when will it be moved to a low-wage country?

born 1983 Studies of Experimental Art and Cultural Studies at the University of the Arts in Linz, Austria. Studies abroad at the Art Department of the Universtiy of California Santa Barbara and at the University of Fine Arts Berlin for Visual Cultural Studies in the class of Katharina Sieverding. Katharina Gruzei works with photography, film, video, installations, media-performances, sound and objects. Working conceptually, she experiments between these disciplines and arrives at an unique crossover language.