REIGN OF ART – Stefan Guzy / Björn Wiede – english subtitles from Kings&Kongs on Vimeo.
It’s decidedly non-digital inspiration – but serious inspiration. Finding the “narrative of substances,” this film reveals the new, experimental approach to materials. It’s a sense perhaps born in the digital age of hybrid forms and endless possibilities on virtual canvases. It’s also reborn in the return to materials you can touch with your fingers directly.
And then you’re suddenly printing with aspirin, tobacco, fat, ash…
In Deutsch but subtitled in English, online video short series “REIGN OF ART” visits experimental printers Stefan Guzy and Björn Wiede in Kreuzberg, Berlin.
This may have VJs and motion artists scrambling for their cameras and some printing equipment – and, indeed, I hope it does just that. But the analogs (cough) for digital work are clear, too:
They work in small formats before going to large.
They’re willing to try any ingredient.
Much of their work is about unexpected combinations of ingredients – even those that clash and conflict.
They aren’t just abstract ingredients, but ones with associations, stories.
And in one way that’s almost impossible to replicate in a digital sense, they change with time – perhaps all the more reason to try actual physical materials somewhere in your digital work.
It’s a beautiful short film, one to which I might return in coming weeks for a mental reboot. Thanks to our friends at Letters are My Friends for the find. And to the filmmakers: