| 27.01.2001 | ||
| Rotterdam: International Film Festival Rotterdam | ||
| Sonic Genetics, 50 min. <!--world première> | ||
| Other screenings included: New York Underground Film Festival; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück; Holland Festival, Amsterdam; Sonar 2001, Barcelona; Chicago Underground Film Festival; Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, Taiwan; Perugia Film Festival; | ||
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Sonic Genetics is the successor to Sonic Fragments: The Poetics of Digital Fragmentation, an experimental programme of seven re:mix films that had its premiere during the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2000. The concept of that project was that seven directors from different artistic backgrounds would be invited to re:mix the same basic raw material to create a corpus of new work. Sonic Genetics extended this idea to what could be considered its logical conclusion: the Sonic Fragments re:mixes are now themselves re:mixed by a new collective of five film artists: Frank Scheffer, Ian Kerkhof, Dick Tuinder, Gerald Van Der Kaap & Phillipp Virus. In This (Sonic Genetics) Van Der Kaap talks back to the original genetic material of the project, the documentary Sonic Acts, re:mixing not its visual material, but rather its contents. He starts ridiculing Stockhausen and takes bold, anarchic sidesteps, letting the edits go astray, much to the confusion of the audience. At one point we find ourselves in Kubrick's Dr Strangelove. The scene, in which Peter Sellars calls for Dimitri "to turn the music down", is Kaap's cue to sync an audio- mix by DJ Dimitri. In the version shown at the NYUFF , Kaap shows the whole scene, not being bothered by any rules or conventions of what sampling should or shouldn't be. As he drags us into the story of the original film, we feel something else is bound to happen. And so it does: a shameless transition of mood to a scene consisting only of words. Apparently the music has urged Kaap to take us back to his very own genetics: the Zero Zero Kaap database. - Simon K. |
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