CineCorpse, 1995 - 1999

KHM Köln 1998
GAS Brooklyn, New York 1999
In cooperation with Hermann Feldhaus


CineCorpse is a joint project between Cologne (Achim Mohné) and New York (Hermann Feldhaus), using film and computers. Like an exquisite corpse, each artist exposes sections of film which are then finished by the second artist, not knowing exactly what images the first artist has used.

Feldhaus and Mohné communicate about the project via e-mail, sending each other hints about the film images in the form of text, drawings and photographs. CineCorpse has been running for 2 years and currently consists of 20 films and 250 pages of e-mail.

The installation consists of 5-10 film projectors, running simultaneously. The 16 mm film loops go in all directions through the installation room and the visitor is positioned inside this film sculpture. As a medium, CineCorpse has been conceived to exist in a category somewhere between film and photography. A fixation upon individual frames is the conceptual foundation behind both the creation and viewing of the films. Also it is designed as a CD ROM, in which format the viewer can completely control the sequence of viewing the images that make up CineCorpse.

CineCorpse
Jens Loenhoff (1998)

Finally, the communication project ‘CineCorpse’, which was realised together with the New York-based artist Hermann Feldhaus, is about establishing a dialogue system that simultaneously uses presentational and discursive forms and whose components are sometimes reminiscent of surrealist drawings in the style of the ‘cadavre exquisite’. And it is about the relationship between these forms and their materiality in the context of new media. The online communication used for planning and realisation becomes part of the aesthetic process itself. This genealogical procedure, which focuses on the transparency of the creative process, forces the viewer to reconstruct the work. The technical and formal originality of the project lies in the side of a double 8/16mm film, exposed by one of the two artists without the intervention of the other, based on texts communicated online. These double-blind parallelisation effects, which allow for unexpected commonality between control and surprise, ultimately form the basis of a film sculpture that runs through the installation space. Once again seeking transformation into the spatial, images and communication channels are placed in a reciprocal context of reference.

CineCorpse
Jens Loenhoff (1998)

Im Kommunikationsprojekt „CineCorpse“ schließlich, das zusammen mit dem in New York lebenden Künstler Hermann Feldhaus realisiert wurde, geht es um die Etablierung eines dialogischen Systems, das sich zugleich präsentativer und diskursiver Formen bedient und deren Bestandteile mitunter an surrealistische Zeichnungen im Stile des „cadavre exquisite“ erinnern. Und es geht um das Verhältnis dieser Formen und ihrer Materialität im Kontext neuer Medien. Die zur Planung und Durchführung genutzte On-line-Kommunikation wird dabei selbst Bestandteil des ästhetischen Prozesses. Dieses genealogische, auf Transparenz des Entstehungsprozesses setzende Verfahren, nötigt den Betrachter zu Rekonstruktionsarbeit. Die technische und formale Originalität des Projektes liegt in der je von einem der beiden Künstler ohne Eingriff der anderen belichteten Seite eines Doppel8/16mm-Films auf der Grundlage on-line kommunizierter Texte. Diese doppelblinden Parallelisierungseffekte, die ungeahnte Gemeinsamkeit zwischen Steuerung und Überraschung einplanen, bilden schließlich die Grundlage einer den Installationsraum durchlaufenden Filmskulptur. Abermals die Transformation ins Räumliche suchend, werden Bilder und Kommunikationswege in einen wechselseitigen Verweisungszusammenhang gestellt.