Media artist Manfred Neuwirth: The Sixties, seen through Dad's camera lens

The Medienwerkstatt Wien is showing new works by the filmmaker – including a film consisting entirely of old footage that evokes nostalgic baby boomer feelings

Upon entering the venue, Medienwerkstatt Wien, visitors are greeted by a monitor showing a film on a continuous loop. A static, 15-minute shot shows the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which is teeming with people. Everyone wants to take a photo, posing in front of their smartphones in the basilica, which is flooded with warm, shimmering light. However, if the tourists strike too exaggerated a pose, attendants are immediately on hand to remind them to behave respectfully.

The amusing video loop opens the exhibition "Space of the Gaze," which brings together eight new works by Austrian filmmaker and multimedia artist Manfred Neuwirth in a small space. Created over the last ten years, they range from serial photography to a tribute to video art pioneer Nam June Paik to a VR installation that turns a volcanic eruption and fiery lava flows in Iceland into a fascinating experience.

In the late 1970s, Neuwirth was one of the founding members of the Medienwerkstatt, which sought to create a critical counter-public sphere to the public broadcasting monopoly of the time. The artists' collective worked closely with civil society initiatives, producing its own weekly newsreel and responsible for the production of oral history classics such as "Küchengespräche mit Rebellinnen". Neuwirth himself became known for his documentary film "Reminiscences of a Lost Land" (1988) about the Allentsteig military training area and as the long-time producer of Gustav Deutsch's found footage works ("Film is."). With his artistic work, Neuwirth – who defines himself as a "researcher, archivist, photographer and sound seeker" – treads the fine line between documentary film, innovative cinema and new media.

Last but not least, the widely travelled artist is an image inventor and "ethnographer" of his own culture. His experimental documentary film studies "Aus einem nahen Land. 24 Szenen aus Kritzendorf" (From a Nearby Country: 24 Scenes from Kritzendorf, 2015) and "Snow/Schnee" (2018) testify to an acute interest in the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary and the fleeting moments of everyday life.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a new film work for which Neuwirth drew on his own biography and family history. The slightly ironic and mysterious title "Vom Vater bleibt nur mehr der Rest auf dem Bild" (Of the father, only a residue remains in the image) describes a half-hour work, or more precisely, a so-called kinestatic film. This does not consist of moving images, but is composed exclusively of photographic stills.

The basis for this is the archive of Neuwirth's father, who was not only an enthusiastic but also a talented amateur photographer. From the thousands of meticulously catalogued images, those from the years 1960 to 1968 were selected for the film.

These approximately 1200 slides, which fade into one another and flash across the screen at a rapid pace, create a kind of visual poem about life and everyday existence during that decade. "In the evenly undulating, impressionistic flood of images, "as the press kit so aptly puts it, "the individuality of a life encounters its historical symptomatology."

In fact, the images are likely to be immediately familiar to many members of the baby boomer generation. They evoke memories of family celebrations, trips to dream destinations (bella Italia!), confirmation visits to the Prater, the opening of the Danube Park, visits to the Bergisel ski jump or the new car – a bright red Kugelporsche.

The soundtrack subtly captures the nostalgic feelings that may quickly arise when watching the film. Musician Christian Fennesz, who has been working with Neuwirth for years, has created an extremely robust soundscape this time around. At the same time, his congenial soundscapes open up astonishing spaces of resonance, lending the film a quasi-three-dimensional quality.

In addition to the screening of the film "Vom Vater bleibt nur mehr der Rest auf dem Bild" (Of the father, only a residue remains in the image), the family's collection of images is also present in the exhibition in another form. On the one hand, as a light table on which 680 of the slides used in the film are laid out like a colourful tapestry of images. And on the other hand, in five specially produced photo books for which Manfred Neuwirth has compiled selected images on themes such as encounters, backdrops and landscapes.

His father's camera is also on display: a 65-year-old Voigtländer, a gem from the pre-digital era.

Michael Omasta, falter

A look back at childhood: new exhibition on nature, family and perception

Translucent images and VR glasses installation: artist Manfred Neuwirth presents new works at the Medienwerkstatt Wien.

A certain minimalism is characteristic of the work of Austrian media artist Manfred Neuwirth. However, he limits himself only in terms of aesthetics, not in his choice of media. The eight new works, which he is currently exhibiting under the title "Space of the Gaze" at the Medienwerkstatt Wien, cover a wide range of genres: In addition to photography and video installations, Neuwirth also shows mixed media works and, for example, a virtual video triptych to be viewed through VR glasses, refers to video pioneer Nam June Paik and works with ambient soundtracks by Christian Fennesz.

He is never grandiose in his approach: Neuwirth takes a subtle approach to focusing on the peculiarities of the gaze. The central work is a slide film, a half-hour motion picture made up of still images. The pace is fast: 40 images delicately fading into one another, switching between landscape and portrait format in 60 seconds – too fast to really engage with the individual views. But it is slow enough to recognise the structures of "holiday viewing", the systematics of family portraits (and, associated with this, certain world views). Neuwirth strings together around 1,200 amateur photographs from the years 1960 to 1968: private shots, slides left behind by his father from the years 1960–68. Neuwirth's work is a tribute to his father's perspectives, which shaped his son and perhaps even initiated his interest in media art. The fleeting nature of the frozen moments that make up a life leaves a bitter yet sweet aftertaste.

Stefan Grissemann, profil