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Together with Nietzsche's philosophy, which demands “Learn to read me well!”, the interview and reading series explores in 14 episodes the many ways in which this demand can be met. The contributions report on the fascination of reading, the points of friction with Nietzsche's philosophy and the connection to other theories and cultures. They also shed light on the biographical points of contact and open up a variety of forms of reading in which reading is combined with music, theater, unmasking, contextualization, genealogical analysis and self-analysis.
Title: Friedrich Nietzsche—Re-Reading the...
Completion Date: September, 2024
A Series by Mersolis Schöne
Assistant and Research Associate: Joel Szonn
Intro-Voice and Flute: Apollina Smaragd
Composition and Sound: Caminauta
Sound Mixing Music: Raul Tizze
With kind support: Klassik Stiftung Weimar
Film Type: Webseries, 14 Episodes
MOVIES
In "The Simultaneity of Breathing", Mersolis Schöne envisions experimental film-production as a space of encounter, bringing together Lisa Est’s "March" drawings, press photos from March 2024, and Thomas Ballhausen’s poetry in a shared philosophical experiment. The film itself takes shape as a living, poetic being that explores those fleeting moments when reality and possibility meet in the blur between breaths.
Title: The Simultaneity of Breathing
Completion Date: November, 2024
Film, Direction, Editing: Mersolis Schöne
Based on Artworks by: Lisa Est
Text: Thomas Ballhausen
Voices: Apollina Smaragd and James Delaney
Sound Art and Composition: Caminauta
Film Type: Artwork Film, Video Poem
Original Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 4:14 minutes
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"Repeat" is an experimental poetry film that brings together the poem "light from the greenery" by Austrian author Sigrun Höllrigl with Indian actress Savita Rani. In conjunction with the music and sound composition by Michael Fischer, as well as the voices of Christian Reiner and Apollina Smaragd, the film delves into the enigmatic world between déjà vu and jamais vu.
Title: Repeat
Completion Date: November, 2023
Country of Origin: Austria
A Film by Mersolis Schöne
Based on a Poem by Sigrun Höllrigl
Cast: Savita Rani
Voices: Christian Reiner, Apollina Smaragd
Music and Sound Composition: Michael Fischer
Film Type: Experimental, Video Poem
Original Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 5:55 minutes
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When two human bodies touch, a silent, unwritten "history of proximity" emerges – a dance through time, fleeting yet enduring. Based on drawings by artist Lisa Est and with the poetry by Herbert J. Wimmer, the film depicts touch as evidence of a shared history, as a tacit conversation between bodies that triggers a new history of commonality (Tactile Historiogenesis).
Title: The History of Proximity
Completion Date: November, 2023
Country of Origin: Austria
Film, Direction, Editing: Mersolis Schöne
Based on Artworks by: Lisa Est
Texts: Herbert J. Wimmer
Voice and Text Arrangement: Apollina Smaragd
Sound Art and Composition: Caminauta
Film Type: Artwork Film, Video Poem
Original Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 99 seconds
Producer: Mersolis Schöne and Lisa Est
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Frame by Frame, "The History of Proximity" takes dance as the connecting core of a new "tactile historiogenesis" that brings color into the darkness of the dreaming jungle of our existence. A film that, despite its brevity, goes so deeply and addresses our poetic self—a must-see for lovers of experimental cinema. JAMES DELANEY
"Sign Action Space" is a short experimental film that captures the musical gestures of the Vienna Improvisers Orchestra, conducted by Michael Fischer. It delves into the intricate relationship between hand movements, sound, and space, using close-ups to highlight the orchestral communication. Utilizing 14 cameras and various visual techniques, the film provides a unique perspective on the transient communication that results in spontaneous compositions.
Title: Sign Action Space
Completion Date: January, 2023
Country of Origin: Austria
Film, Direction, Editing: Mersolis Schöne
Camera: Alexander Bachmayer, Christan Venosa...
Film Type: Experimental, Short
Original Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 12 minutes
Producer: Mersolis Schöne
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"Sign Action Space" is a wordless voyage into the heart of a more primordial communication, an immersion into the gathering of humans, instruments, and spaces that bring each other to life as a new collectivity. DR JOSHUA BERGAMIN
A decade in newspaper headlines - Austrian artist Lisa Est has cut out, torn, and collected these headlines. She has crocheted, glued, wrapped, and randomly mixed them together, creating a multi-layered work between object and collage art as well as experimental literature. "PalimpsEst" scratches, illuminates, and recombines these layers of transformation into 9 experimental image-and-sound poems.
Title: PalimpsEst
Completion Date: October, 2022
Country of Origin: Austria
Film, Direction, Editing: Mersolis Schöne
Based on Artworks by: Lisa Est
Sound and Composition: Wolfgang Seierl
Project Type: Experimental, Short
Film Type: Artwork Film, Video Poem
Original Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 9 minutes
Producer: Mersolis Schöne
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"PalimpsEst" is a distinctive cinematic artwork that delightfully transforms an already multi-layered piece of art into film art - it invites you to poetic amazement. HERBERT J. WIMMER & MARION STEINFELLNER
Touches are journeys - a film poem about the multi-faceted journey of interpersonal, intercultural encounters. How are we connected with each other? Based on a poetic text collage by Marion Steinfellner, which brings together Indian, Japanese, German, and Austrian texts.
Title: Exposed To Each Other
Original Title: Einander Ausgesetzt
Completion Date: February, 2022
Country of Origin: Austria
Film, Direction, Editing: Mersolis Schöne
Text-Collage: Marion Steinfellner
Cast: Yuko Kaseki, Savita Rani, Marion
Steinfellner
Sound and Composition: Michael Fischer
Film Type: Video Poem, Experimental, Short
Film Language: German and English
Original Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 10/13 minutes
Producer: Mersolis Schöne
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Poetry becomes concrete in the densely composed now of the film, in the moments of its realization in the consciousness of the viewer. In the now of the different ways of experiencing, in the now of poetry, the unique diversity of EXPOSED TO EACH OTHER comes into existence. HERBERT J. WIMMER
EXPOSED TO EACH OTHER is an unpredictable film, a film that challenges you, that stands apart from all genres because it pulls from all of them. It is a true synthesis of poetry and film that generates its own associations, connotations and metaphors that neither the original text nor the film by itself would have been able to provide. It is a movie that requires attention because you need to be drawn into the very special atmosphere created by all of the artistic elements working in sync. It is a piece of art, a piece of spoken word poetry, a dance film, an avant-garde experimental short, a collage. It is a movie that requires attention because the way it is made demands attention and thought. THE NEW JERSEY STAGE MAGAZIN
Vienna-based composer, pianist, and improviser Katharina Klement works on the expansion of the concept of music. She performs with piano and extended playing techniques on stages from Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus to New York City. "Katharina Klement – Notes, Sound, and Film" takes us behind the scenes and gives an insight into the genesis environment and the creative process of her work.
Title: Katharina Klement – Notes, Sound...
Completion Date: December, 2021
Country of Origin: Austria
A Film by: Mersolis Schöne
Cast: Katharina Klement
Interview and Script: Mersolis Schöne
Sound and Composition: Katharina Klement
Film Type: Short, Documentary
Original Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 15 minutes
Producer: Mersolis Schöne
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"In This Present Space" showcases an exclusive concert performance by the Vienna Improvisers Orchestra (VIO) at Vienna's Odeon Theater, conducted by Michael Fischer. The film uniquely emphasizes the art of Instant Composition Conducting, a VIO hallmark technique where spontaneous musical ideas are relayed through hand signals, capturing the poetry of the moment.
Title: In This Present Space
Completion Date: December, 2021
Country of Origin: Austria
Film, Direction, Editing: Mersolis Schöne
Director of Photography: Alexander Bachmayer
Camera: Christan Venosa, Patrick Seidl
Text: Michael Fischer
Voice: Anne Bennent
Film Type: Concert
Original Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 57 minutes
Producer: Mersolis Schöne
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What is the silent moment between thoughts, glances, and memories? "The Remembering Movement" thinks poetically about this moment. This film depicts an experimental and poetic film triptych: "Thinking-Chant", "Gaze-Frame", and "Light-Texture" based on the poem "Since Then" by Marion Steinfellner and Mersolis Schöne.
Title: The Remembering Movement
Original Title: Die erinnernde Bewegung
Completion Date: July, 2020
Country of Origin/Filming: Austria
Film, Direction, Skript, Voice: Mersolis
Schöne
Painting, Poems, Voice: Marion Steinfellner
Sound and Composition: Michael Fischer
Film Type: Video Art, Experimental, Short
Film Language: German and English
Original Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 8 minutes 45 seconds
Producer: Mersolis Schöne
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A film of extraordinary beauty, whose magic lies in showing, with all available film-aesthetic means, memory as movement - and this one single neuronal moment, when perception becomes memory and memory becomes perception. Every movement becomes memory, every memory becomes movement. The film is the river in which we do not enter only once, which we experience, explore always anew and always in a new way. "The Remembering Movement" flows through us as we follow its course, in the pull of the arrow of time, in the interplay of flexible horizons of rhythms of depths of field and depths of focus, linguistic, verbal, musical, pictorial. HERBERT J. WIMMER
Moments of a memory. Abstract traces and noisy audible tissue. Fuzzy symbols of dreams pass by. Overlapping spheres of dialogues. Jumping details of resistance. Fluid moments of realignment and vibrant togetherness of clarity. The chirping of crickets, rain, and cowbell sounds grow more compressed and freeze. Somebody speaks in a fragmentized way. The former movement exists as a trace of memory now.
Title: Love - A Memory Sculpture
Original Title: Liebe - Eine
Gedächtnisskulptur
Completion Date: August, 2019
Country of Origin/Filming: Austria/India
Film and Drawings: Mersolis Schöne
Sound and Composition: Katharina Klement
Film Type: Video Art, Experimental, Short
Film Language: English
Original Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 3 minutes 52 seconds
Producer: Mersolis Schöne
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Collaboration across disparate aesthetic contexts at the same time - blending poems, music and noise. It is stamped forever like a microscopic universe or the droplets of blobbing ink or the rain-like sprinkle of paint. Music, texts and the nearest star we reach for in the cosmos of a lost galaxy that soon appears on the page. And now? My memory is shaping my work and my work is sculpting my memory. JAMES DELANEY
As an archive in constant change, walls surround us. As on skin, traces of urban life are shown on them. Out of the corners of our eyes, scratches, nicks, shapes, letters and words are absorbed by us in passing moments. They reveal our longing for continuity, visibility and the expression of becoming. Today’s manifestations of eternity will be nothing more than tomorrow’s background for future messages: constant change and eternity at the same time - being preserved in change.
Title: Forever
Completion Date: April, 2019
Country of Origin/Filming: Austria/India
Direction: Mersolis Schöne
Film Type: Video Art, Docu, Experimental, Short
Film Language: English
Original Format: 4k, DCP
Running Time: 25 seconds
Producer: Mersolis Schöne
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Every act of reading is an act of forgetting: the experience of reading is a palimpsest, in which each text partially covers those that came before. JAMES A. SECORD
"Hey you! Watch out! What does the deep midnight say?" "Deternity" is an experimental poetic short film exploring Friedrich Nietzsche's poem "Once More" (also called "The Drunken Song" from the book "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"). By using a combination of performance and projection techniques, the film depicts a protagonist being confronted with his own psychological dilemmas in a scene dominated by alternating light and shadows.
Title: Deternity
Completion Date: May, 2018
Country of Origin: Austria
Direction: Evi Jägle and Mersolis
Schöne
Film Type: Experimental, Short
Film Language: English
Original Format: Digital, 4K, Color
Screening Format: 4K, DCP
Producer: Mersolis Schöne
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"Deternity" establishes itself through a discomfiting "video" or "installation art" aesthetic... there is a truly delusional, psychoactive effect that forces a viewer to question the space that is being portrayed, if it is even a physical space at all... the editing and cinematography propel this experience’s visceral imagery to deliver a tense, thought-provoking, and strangely symphonic experimental feat. OUCHY FILM AWARDS
"THINKING NIETZSCHE" is an essayistic documentary featuring interviews and performances based on Nietzsche's book "Human, All Too Human" which leads the viewer to extraordinary places of thinking. Confronted with "a supermarket of ideas", each time we read "ends with an orgasm of insight". Will his texts go on to change our lives, identities, the world?
Title: THINKING NIETZSCHE
Original Title: NIETZSCHE DENKEN
Completion Date: February, 2018
Country of Filming: AT, CH, USA
Director: Mersolis Schöne
Assistant Director: Joel Szonn
Music: James Delaney, Friedrich Nietzsche
Film Type: Documentary
Film Language: German, English
Cast: Babette Babich, Arno Böhler, Helmut Heit...
Screening Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 96 minutes
Producer: Mersolis Schöne
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Film is made for philosophy; it shifts or puts different light on whatever philosophy has said about appearance and reality, about actors and characters, about skepticism and dogmatism, about presence and absence. STANLEY CAVELL
What happens if a philosophical text is mirrored in the world of sign language? What happens if thoughts and signs are translated into moving pictures? This short ethnographic documentary showing how a woman who is deaf tries to comprehend and embody a text by Friedrich Nietzsche in an experimental setting.
Title: Reading Through the Body
Original Title: Körpersprache
Completion Date: May, 2016
Country of Origin: Austria
Author and Director: Mersolis Schöne
Reader and Performer: Lena Schramek
Camera, Cut, Sound Design: Christan Venosa
Assist. Director, Support: Emanuel Megersa
Production Assistant, Interviewer: Ronja Thum
Film Type: Documentary, Short
Screening Format: HD, DCP
Running Time: 7 minutes 42 seconds
Presented by: Moving Thought
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An accomplished sign language interpreter attempting the impossible becomes a mesmerising piece of performance art, in a film which reminds us that words are not necessary for a profound cinematic experience. FILMbath FESTIVAL UK
What role does physicality play in science? "Thinking with the Hands" is a short ethnographic documentary dedicated to the involvement of physicality in scientific knowledge production. We almost invariably picture knowledge generation as an eminently cerebral, cognitive work process where the body is all but irrelevant. In contrast, this film investigates the role played by hands in daily laboratory work routine.
Title: Thinking with the Hands
Original Title: Das denkende Tun der Hände
Completion Date: May, 2015
Country of Origin: Austria
Direction: Mersolis Schöne
Assistant Director: L. Constantin, T. Seck
Film Type: Documentary, Short
Film Language: German / English
Screening Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 9 minutes 28 seconds
Presented by: Moving Thought
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Without the thinking actions of the hands, an essential part of the human thinking would literally fall out of our grasp. PIERRE SACHSE
Bridging the gap between science and love, this film essay takes viewers on a journey of discovery through the public spaces of the University of Vienna to explore the connection between reason and emotion - between science and love. Within this philosophical experiment, contrasting images arise: a monument to rationality and a beating heart; a love letter and a technical definition of love.
Title: Science and Love
Original Title: Wissenschaft und Liebe
Completion Date: October, 2014
Country of Origin: Austria
Direction: Mersolis Schöne
Voices: Linda Erker, Jürgen Stowasser
Film Type: Philosophical Film Essay
Film Language: German / English
Screening Format: 4K, DCP
Running Time: 9 minutes 39 seconds
Presented by: Moving Thought
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Cinema transforms philosophy. In other words, cinema transforms the very notion of idea. Cinema basically consists in creating new ideas about what an idea is. To put it another way, cinema is a philosophical situation. Expressed abstractly, a philosophical situation is the relationship between terms that usually have no relationship with each other. A philosophical situation is an encounter between terms that are foreign to each other. ALAIN BADIOU
