Rainer Kohlberger

Emergence Collapse, the collaborative project of Berlin-based artist and filmmaker Rainer Kohlberger and Viennese electronic music producer Jung An Tagen is nearly beyond description (and perception): An assault on the senses that is at once euphoric and harrowing, at once completely alien and uncannily evocative, their work is perhaps the perfect artistic manifestation of existential angst. Jung An Tagens frighteningly frenetic and earsplitting dissonance is complimented perfectly by Rainer Kohlbergers constantly evolving, neon-tinged visual freak-out. The result is relentless and painfully overwhelming, but like a horror movie, Emergence Collapse demands – and ultimately rewards – your attention.

RBB invited 30 film makers to create works in their own 4 walls while in lockdown due to the impact of Corona virus. Each one is 120 seconds long. Here is my contribution ›deviation‹ with sound by Jung an Tagen.

Moon Blink was entirely generated by complex software, no camera was used. The result of this formal method is an abstract digital artwork that not only manages to convince thanks to its mathematical precision, but primarily also due to its incredible beauty and surprising narrative structure. Comparison to the classic abstract films from the 1920s by, for instance, Ruttmann, seems justified.

Visuals for Edgar Varèse’s Arcana. Performed by the Bruckner Orchestra Linz under the direction of Argentine conductor and composer Dante Anzolini.

a minimalistic audio visual composition you can play yourself.

Experimental short film by Rainer Kohlberger

'Grauer Sand' by Pole, track taken from the new album 'Tempus'.

In Kohlberger’s second film that could be considered narrative driven, the artist fashions a dystopian fiction from the remnants of cinema’s past. Drawing on excerpts from obscure sci-fi films, The Electric Kiss imagines a world not unlike our own, in which people plug their brains into a kind of neuro-network that connects the whole of human consciousness. As cyberpunk imagery draped in VHS textures alternates with passages of prismatic visual noise (achieved, in trademark style, by feeding footage through self trained machine learning algorithms), a quasi-plot emerges: a man in a VR headset, literally and figuratively lost in space, subjects himself to a mysterious procedure to alleviate the ill effects of this new technology on the mind.