Mario Pfeifer’s film *Yet Untitled [»Pieces of Nature«] (2008)* is a structural narration about the production of movingimages. Departing from the abstract space of an empty film studio, the German filmmaker is developing a poetical investigation of the spatial and aesthetic conditions of his medium and the implications for the production of meaning. The script being the result of a close collaboration with the actors revolves around their immediate reactions to the design of the studio; their performance of a casting situation for a fictitious film project serves as the plot of the piece.
"*So when the construction is exposed it makes the line between performer and performance a bit more complicated and perhaps in that way a better articulation of something real.*" These lines of an actor in the film are echoing along the frames. A certain longing for dis-alienated image production resonates within. It is by no means coincidental that the "Nature“ – the strongest and yet most complicated metaphor of truth - serves the work as a non-title. Yet Untitled [»Pieces of Nature«] is thus an ambiguous ode to the hallucinatory institution of cinematography, overflowing of poetic allusions towards the sheer materiality in the process of image making. Pfeifer’s parti-cular synthesis of the real and the symbolic, the representative and the sensuous ultimately mani-fest the philosophical depth of the piece without straightening out the paradoxical discomfort of his very medium.
Julia Moritz
*»Untitled [Two Guys]«(2007)* is the product of close collaboration and dialogue with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The allembracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence – a power that functions without being owned. »Untitled [Two Guys]« captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a "globalized society" and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.
~Jakob Schillinger
*»Reconsidering The new Industrial Parks near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974« (2009)* revisits one of the industrial structures Lewis Baltz documented in his historic "New Topographics" from the outside and depicts the interior setting of a metal workshop with an eleven minute tracking shot. During this time, the 1974 book version has been reconsidered from back to front, each turning page a montage within the continuous 16mm black and white footage. An interview with J.R. Billington, a company owner in this building for nineteen years, discusses the socio-economical situation in military manu-facturing in Orange County in the 1980's and today.
~Mario Pfeifer
Mario Pfeifer (b. 1981, Dresden /Germany) is a filmmaking artist based inBerlin and Los Angeles. He studied Fine Art at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, University of the Arts Berlin and Städelschule Frankfurt am Main where he graduated in 2008. On invitation of the ’Bangkok Experimental Filmfestival 5’ he co-curated international, artist made films from Berlin for the 2008 festival’s program which also screened at Sun Screens Festival Berlin. Mario Pfeifer is a current Fulbright Scholar at the California Institute of the Art’s Film Program. Mario is Co-founder of [blackboardfilms] Berlin / Los Angeles, an artist-run discourse/production platform for filmaking artist and filmmakers outside of a conventional studio system.
