LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz

Information Sheet

FRIEDL VOM GRÖLLER

Paris +33 621 24 11 37
Films and Photographs

29 April to 10 July 2011

DVR-Nummer 0002852

LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, A-4021 Linz, Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1

Tel: +43 (0)732.7070-3600 Fax: +43 (0)732.7070-3604 www.lentos.at
Contents

Exhibition Facts 3

Press Text 4

Biography Friedl vom Gröller (= Friedl Kubelka) 5

Catalogue Essay by Brigitte Reutner 7

Press Images and Credits 9

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Exhibition Facts

Exhibition Title: FRIEDL VOM GRÖLLER. Paris +33 621 24 11 37

Films and Photographs

Exhibition Period 29 April to 10 July 2011

Press Conference Friday, 29 April 2011, 10 am
Exhibition Venue LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz
Exhibits 8 Films and several photo series
Curator Brigitte Reutner
Catalogue in german and english language, 48 pages, with essays by Brigitte
Reutner and Harry Tomicek, € 12,-
ISBN 978-3-901862-32-8

Contact Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1, 4020 Linz, Tel. +43(0)732/7070-3600;

info@lentos.at, www.lentos.at

Opening Hours Tuesday–Sunday 10 am–6 pm, Thursday 10 am–9 pm,

closed on Monday
Admission € 6,50, ermäßigt € 4,50

Press Contact Nina Kirsch, Tel. +43(0)732/7070-3603, nina.kirsch@lentos.at

Available at the Press Conference:

Brigitte Reutner, Curator
Friedl vom Gröller, Artist

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Press Text

Succinct and enigmatic at the same time: Friedl vom Gröller’s short films radiate an
irresistible attraction. Her work centers around the image of the human being.
Is the camera merely a technical eye for recording segments of reality, or can it do much
more? Do self-perception and self-presentation change with the awareness of recording,
of reproducibility? Using the media of photography and film Friedl vom Gröller
investigates the roles of the filmmaker and her models.

The photographer Friedl Kubelka (* 1946 in London) goes by the name of Friedl vom
Gröller as a film artist. In 1990 she founded the School for Artistic Photography in
Vienna, of which she was the director until 2010. Today she is the director of the School
of Independent Film, Vienna, which she also founded.

In her photographic and film work since the 1970s Kubelka = vom Gröller, meanwhile
also trained in psychoanalysis, has focused on the portrait. In her films tying into the
traditions of French auteur cinema and avant-garde film, vom Gröller simply asks the
protagonists to look into the camera. The actors are people without acting training, often
from the artist’s personal surroundings – family and friends. They face the camera like a
mirror. The film apparatus records every emotion, every indication of a state of mind,
thus revealing the essence of the person filmed.

The exhibition in LENTOS is one of the rare presentations of an oeuvre that already
enjoys cult status. Eight short films are shown (including Graf Zokan / Franz West, 1969,
Gutes Ende, 2010) and several photo series, including Nationalratsdebatte, 2002, as a
portrait of the artist’s mother and several famous self-portraits from the early 1970s.

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Biography Friedl vom Gröller (= Friedl Kubelka)

Born 1946 in London

Lives in Vienna

She spent her childhood in Vienna and Berlin. From 1965–1969 she studied photography
at the School of Graphic Arts. 1971 Masters certificate and commercial atelier for
photography. 2005 National award for photography. 1990 Founder and director of School
for Artistic Photography, Vienna (until 2010). 2006 Founder and director of School for
Independent Film, Vienna. First films in 1968. Screenings (Selection): Generali
Foundation, Vienna, Anthology Filmarchives, N.Y., documenta 12, Austrian
Filmmuseum, Toronto Filmfestival (2009, 2010), Hong-Kong Filmfestival (2010, 2011),
Berlin Biennale (2010), Diagonale (2009, 2010, 2011) , Retrospective MEDIA-CITY
Canada 2010.

Films (Selection):
Erwin, Toni, Ilse, 1968/69
Eingreifen, 2001/2005
Spucken, 2000
Le Barometre, 2004
Vue Tactile, 2006
Polterabend, 2009
Passage Briare, 2009
Boston Steamer, 2009
Hochzeit, 2009
Delphine de Oliveira, 2009

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Catalogue Essay by Brigitte Reutner

The Cinema of Friedl vom Gröller

For my film I need people who tell me their truths while at the same time remaining totally
committed to my fiction. What I demand of them is for their truths to support my fiction.
(Jean-Luc Godard)1

When she dons her hat as a film maker Friedl Kubelka calls herself Friedl vom Gröller.
All Friedl vom Gröller ever asks her protagonists to do is to look straight into the camera.
Her protagonists are people chosen from a suitable background. As a rule they have had
no professional training whatsoever as actors or actresses. They present themselves to
the camera as if the latter was a mirror. In contrast to a mirror, however, the camera
produces a record of even the slightest flicker of human emotion, the most minute
indication of the feelings of the person in front of the camera, and turns it into evidence of
his or her nature or character.
As opposed to Narcissus, who was able to contemplate his face the moment it appeared
on the spring’s surface,2 the protagonist does not get to see his reflection in the artist’s
mirror until after a certain amount of time has elapsed. What his reactions looked like at
the time when they were being recorded does not become clear to him until the finished
product, the photo or the film, is ready for viewing. His immediate counterpart is different
in kind compared to normal human interaction: it is a piece of technology, the lens of the
camera, to which all emotions are alien.
This is why the protagonist is totally dependent on the person who operates the camera.
On the basis of his commitment to and openness for the action of the film he entrusts
himself completely to the person behind the camera. He consents to being involved in
the recording of an action, even though he cannot accept, reject or comment on the
result until the whole business is over, until he is free to assume the role of viewer.

Face to Face with a Cine-Camera

The artist’s camera transforms the constantly changing mirror reflection – to continue
with the metaphor of the Narcissus myth – into a sequence of individual frames that is
parallel to the live “film” whose action is taking place in reality. The recording that results
from this makes the recorded events reproducible and lifts them above the natural flow of
time and ist constraints, which render the past irretrievable and the future inaccessible,
despite its tantalizing assertion of always being close at hand.

1
Godard, Jean-Luc: Liebe, Arbeit, Kino. Rette sich wer kann (Das Leben). (Sauve qui peut (la vie)). Translated from the
French by Lothar Kurzawa and Volker Schäfer. (= Internationaler Merve Diskurs Nr. 99). Berlin 1981, S. 70-71.
2
Ovid, Metamorphoses 3, 331–510.

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Cinema offers a record of a segment of reality. It encapsulates actions and experiences,
thereby dispensing with the need for these actions and experiences to be reenacted on
the physical level. It creates a parallel universe and enables us to conjure up the past at
will, to view a sliver of the past whenever and in whatever context we desire to do so.3
Is the camera merely a technological device, a hi-tech eye designed to record segments
of reality, or is it capable of more? Weighing up the respective merits of painting and
photography, André Bazin had this to say in favour of automatic reproduction: “Only a
photographic lens can give us the kind of image of the object that is capable of satisfying
the deep need man has to substitute for it something more than a mere approximation, a
kind of decal or transfer. The photographic image is the object itself, the object freed
from the conditions of time and space that govern it.” 4

What impact does awarenes of its recordability and unlimited reproducibility have on self-
perception and self-representation? What traces does the knowledge that their images
can be reproduced in settings from which they are physically absent leave in the
consciousness of the protagonists? An intimate understanding of these questions is the
basis for Friedl vom Gröller’s critique of cinema as a medium.

Interactions
One additional aspect of Friedl vom Gröller’s cinema needs to be taken into account,
namely the relationship between herself as camera woman and her protagonists. In
some of her films, Friedl vom Gröller is not content with the role of operating the
technological eye”. Drawing on her role as artist, she pointedly intervenes from behind
the camera in what is going on in front of it – or even puts in an appearance as an
additional protagonist. In this way, Friedl vom Gröller deliberately oversteps the invisible
boundary that is supposed to confine her to the role of the person for whom the camera
doubles as her “eye”. This introduces a powerful element of surprise. The protagonist
suddenly gets company in the guise of an additional protagonist, which is hived off, as it
were, from the camera eye/camera woman entity.
The fact that there is suddenly an additional protagonist adds a new dynamic to the
process, which makes itself felt immediately. The effects of this kind of impromptu
intervention are clearly registered in the facial expressions of the main protagonist.
Typically there is that flash of surprise.

3
See also Bazin, André: The Ontology of the Photographic Image (1945), in Bazin, André: What is Cinema? Essays
selected and translated by Hugh Gray, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1967, pp. 9–16, here: 13f: “This production by
automatic means has radically affected our psychology of the image. The objective nature of photography confers on it a
quality of credibility absent from all other picture-making. In spite of any objections our critical spirit may offer, we are
forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually re-produced, set before us, that is to say, in time
and space.”
4
Bazin, André: The Ontology of the Photographic Image, p. 14.

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For a fraction of a second the facial routine gives way to an expression of
defencelessness and openness and the soul is exposed to view. Life seems like a
stream of close-knit, momentary images, giving us the impression that sequence follows
upon sequence in an unending succession. As a medium for which time is of the
essence, cinema is therefore uniquely suited to trace the pulsing fluctuations of life.
A person’s outward appearance is comparable to a storehouse of information that life
has inscribed on the body. Facial expressions, gestures, tics, wrinkles, the shapes
assumed by muscles, the range of expressions visible in the eyes and around the mouth,
posture, gait – all these are indicators of a person’s past and may serve as a basis for
conjectures about their future.
Friedl vom Gröller’s cineastic approach, with its links to French auteur cinema and to
avant-garde film making, grants us insights into the mystery of human existence and into
the possibilities of making cineastic representation bear testimony to it. Or, in the words
of Jean-Luc Godard: “What makes cinema so interesting is something that is entirely
unique to it: it allows us not to know / savoir / but to see / voir / so that we may know,
perhaps, in retrospect.” 5

5
See note 1, p. 79.

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 Press Images

The press images are available for downloading at www.lentos.at

1. Friedl vom Gröller 2. Friedl Kubelka 3. Friedl Kubelka 4. Friedl Kubelka

Photo: © Maria Ziegelböck, Self portrait from the series
2006 of the annual portraits Eine
reichlich humorlose
Angelegenheit, 12.8.82
b/w Photo
© Friedl Kubelka
Self portrait from the series Venzone, 1975
of the annual portraits Eine b/w Photo
reichlich humorlose © Friedl Kubelka
Angelegenheit, 11.3.08 Photo: Reinhard Haider
b/w Photo
© Friedl Kubelka
Photo: Reinhard Haider

5. Friedl Kubelka 6. Friedl vom Gröller 7. Friedl Kubelka

Toni with Statue, 1970
b/w Photo
© Friedl Kubelka
Photo: Reinhard Haider
Delphine de Oliveira, 2009 Parthenon, 2000
© Friedl vom Gröller mit Unterstützung 3 mixed medias on cardboard (b/w photos,
des bm:ukk opaque white)
© Friedl Kubelka
Photo: Reinhard Haider

8. Friedl vom Gröller
Graf Zokan / Franz West, 1969
Filmstill
© Friedl vom Gröller
Courtesy sixpackfilm
9. Friedl vom Gröller in her 10. Exhibition view at the LENTOS
exhibition at the LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz
Photo: maschekS. 2011 Photo: maschekS. 2011
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