Since the late 1980s, Matthias Müller has made some of the most important contributions to experimental cinema in Germany. Whether in his own work or in his collaboration with artist Christoph Girardet, which has grown since 1999: At the heart of this work is an exploration of appropriated footage, some found by chance and some elaborately researched and collected. Its origins range from Hollywood to home movies, from stock footage agencies to private chat rooms.  

From appropriation of dominant cinematic archives, to critical scrutiny of film techniques, the 12 modern and contemporary artists' works presented in this program exemplify an alternative and highly self-reflective form of cinema. Following Erika Balsom’s understanding of contemporary art as a potential “laboratory for film, a place in which its social, technological and aesthetic history can be picked over and recycled,” they reconsider what cinema is (or was) and what it can do. With an emphasis on the ideology behind the operation of filmic apparatus and the technological externalization of memory and time, the works in this program expose critical and aesthetic potentials of “an other cinema,” oscillating between white cube and black box.