Michaela Schwentner “Bellevue”

Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Lands End / Artists

Michaela Schwentner, Austria: “Bellevue” (still), video, 9:15 min, 2007

The close-up shows a mountain summit, elusive because of the fog as well as poor image resolution. In addition, electronic noise and sounds. Michaela Schwentner’s video film “Bellevue” is based on web-cam shots of the Grossglockner [the highest mountain in Austria] turned into a dense nine-minute film with the picture files additionally transformed to sound files. The result is a film in which nothing happens at first sight, it shows a mountain in the course of time, a mountain you have to get involved with, get part of it, as if time was dissolving. Then, however, you gradually become aware of minimal changes – here and there you discern steep hills or covers of snow that disappear again – and get the impression of times seemingly intertwined. This web-cam projection of the mountain reminds of drawings, coloured photographs or motion pictures of centuries past.

The mountain, epitome of the sublime and remote, is presented as a media event as well as some part of mythical eternity. A standstill of time, less sublime than, to a greater degree, deeply melancholic.