The Public As Exhibit

Documentary and pseudo-documentary procedures were filmed simultaneously by two cameras from different viewpoints. The material was then divided into phases of movement. In the montage each phase was doubled. The techniques used in this process vary. Also the sound was doubled, again using different techniques. Two realities, differently perceived according to the conditions of this film, were edited into one synthetic reality, where everything is repeated. This doubling up destroys the postulate: identity of copy and image.

A journalist runs a strict, scheduled routine to date four different women simultaneously, while keeping them completely separated from one another. His charade slowly starts falling apart.

Set in contemporary Vienna, the film involves a photographer, Anna, who discovers that extraterrestrial beings are colonizing the minds of her fellow citizens by raising the human aggression quotient. The outer world immediately becomes disjointed, yet the inner world does too, as Anna and her lover, Peter, try to hang onto their deteriorating relationship.

Wanda, a dominatrix who runs an S&M gallery on the Hamburg waterfront, must choose between her lesbian lover and an American trainee.

Seven Women, Seven Sins (1986) represents a quintessential moment in film history. The women filmmakers invited to direct for the seven sins were amongst the world's most renown: Helke Sander (Gluttony), Bette Gordon (Greed), Maxi Cohen (Anger), Chantal Akerman (Sloth), Valie Export (Lust), Laurence Gavron (Envy), and Ulrike Ottinger (Pride). Each filmmaker had the liberty of choosing a sin to interpret as they wished. The final film reflected this diversity, including traditional narrative fiction, experimental video, a musical, a radical documentary, and was delivered in multiple formats from 16, super 16, video and 35mm.

A guy having sex with a woman on a rooftop – just to get her coffee-machine.

One day, Nina confesses to her boyfriend Mick, that she never has had an orgasm. Comedy about the problems of relationship and sexuality in a parody of the sex enlightenment and soft sex genre.

‘Kunst & Revolution is a documentation on the famous action known as the “filthy uni mess”, which led to a jury court trial. I only had a few metres of film with me and they were quickly spent, but still the film gives one a rough impression of the events. As a whole mythology quickly arose around the event, I altered the material to counteract this effect (through repetition, and adding other material, for instance from a film about keeping dogs, and my own leftover footage from the Muehl action number 54 ‘Im Freudenauer Wasser’).’ In film 16 of his anthology Ernst Schmidt Jr. documented the actions of Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Peter Weibel and Oswald Wiener.

"This video film shows indecency in its modern form. While peddling naked female flesh was considered indecent in the past, we can see by the examples of today´s star athletes that skin full of advertising sells better. The same applies to politicians, of course, though in a more subtle way. Advertising on skin as the new indecency! I consider this film to be a continuation of my previous work with the body as a vehicle for social codes. While in the past it was religion that dictated male and female behaviour, which was also expressed in their physical appearance, business has now assumed this role. Business dictates physical behaviour, physical pressure in its most direct form, and even sets standards for how our bodies are to be represented. Religion no longer prescribes morality, that is now done by the global power of business, with its products and codes. Morality has found a new patron." (Valie Export)

Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.

In Nivea, an actor, holding a rubber ball, stands motionless for one minute (like a standing frame) in front of the screen onto which empty frames are projected, accompanied by a camera noise on tape. An inflatable, direct advertising film. An image object problem.

Short film depicting a man and woman smoking.

Short film depicting a typewriter and text falling over.

Communication is the medium

Broadcast on the Austrian Television (ORF) in June 1972, TV & VT-Works comprises a series of ‘tele-actions’ in which a cigar-smoking newsreader is periodically interrupted by public interventions raising the question “Is this Art?”. Disrupting the smooth flow of information and thus the illusion of comprehending the world from one’s living room, these actions interrogate TV temporality to examine the mechanisms of production and spectatorship. A work of culture jamming avant la lettre.

Compilation consisting of 17 of Peter Weibel's earlier works.