Catalogue > At random

There are streets, paths, motorways, alleys, boulevards and promenades. And there are life paths, intersections and dead ends. Two men sit on the shady raised platform of a brick building somewhere in Montevideo. They are submerged in a conversational marathon that never ceases throughout the entire film. The younger of the two is an analyst; the older man his analysand. Their nationalities are unclear; they speak a simple, internationally understandable English. They talk about a childhood among the ruins and the traumatised people of Germany shortly after the Second World War, about fleeing, about an obsessive interest in architecture and about manic writing. And they speak about work with the film camera, which is a technical instrument for the young analyst, but a lifeline for the old film director. The starting point of the six-day marathon is the psychological and physical block that prevents the director from starting a last great film, the Streetscapes saga. The conversation, which in a slow process dissolves the director’s block, takes place in changing places in extreme architectures. The camera, which portrays them both and sets them in relation to the architecture, becomes a third partner. The camera repeatedly disengages from where they are and explores the surrounding streets and neighbourhoods before returning to the two protagonists. The shell constructions of the Uruguayan builder Eliado Dieste where they sojourn resemble gigantic braincases and thus provide a framework for the site and the theme of the project that emerges in the course of their talk: trauma and architecture.

Born in 1948 in Achim, Germany, Heinz Emigholz studied philosophy and literature at the University in Hamburg. In 1978, he founded his own film company Pym Films. From 1993 to 2013, he held a professorship in experimental filmmaking at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he co-founded the Institute for Time-Based Media as well as the university’s art and media course. The artist has been working since 1973 as a freelance filmmaker, artist, writer, cinematographer, producer, and journalist. Since 2012 he has been a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. For the past fifteen years, the German experimental filmmaker has dedicated himself to an ambitious series of documentaries that focus on the work of visionary 20th century architects. Emigholz is known as a man of few words, making photography and architecture his own language. To use his words, “Architecture projects space into this world. Cinematography translates that space into pictures projected in time. Cinema then is used in a completely new way: as a space to meditate on buildings.” Thus, the artist enhances our understanding of a critical junctures in architectural history and explores how film and architecture deal with issues of time, space and narrative. Heinz Emigholz is an internationally renowned artist who has won multiple awards. He was the winner of the Berlin International Film Festival for Best Documentary (1988); Special award for four of his films at the German Film Critics Association Awards (2001/2008/2009); Best Film at the German Film Critics Award for Best Film(1983). The artist has also been nominated in several festivals, namely the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (2013), and the German Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography / Best Editing (2017). His work has been presented in a great deal of berliner galeries (the Galerie Eisenbahnstraße, Berlin (1986); the Galerie, Berlin (1988); the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2007) ; the Zwinger Gallery, Berlin (2014) ; the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2015). He has been also presented in Architekturbiennale, Venice (2008) and Kassel, Toronto, Tel Aviv or Vienna.