UNICA (2022)
HD, 36min, sound
UNICA is named after the writer and artist Unica Zürn (1916 - 1970), whose illustrated text The House of Illnesses (1958) figures her body and her institutionalisation as one formation. Rethinking contemporary forms of immersion in simulated worlds through Zürn’s body-building, UNICA attends to the syncretic lifeforms that emerge from the intra-actions between the organismic, technological and phantasmal today. The latent presence of an unnamed catastrophe is repeatedly evoked by the protagonists, an artist and a motion-capture performer, via overlapping references to post-apocalyptic computer games, drawings, and dreams. This deliberate indeterminacy is extended to Teufelsberg, a forested hill on the outskirts of Berlin made from the debris of Second World War ruins, where parts of the work were filmed. By merging motion capture with quasi-archaeological procedures, UNICA calls attention to the artificial naturalisation of historical and ongoing violence, and the conditions of possibility for its decoding and disruption.
CREDITS
Gabrielle Scharnitzky (UNICA A)
Grete Gehrke (UNICA B)
Written and directed by Blaise Kirschner
Cinematography - Julian Moser
Camera Assistant - Luisa Knight
Editing - Katharina Voß
Dramaturgy & Choreography - Zee Hartmann
Production design - Cleo Niemeyer-Nasser
Hair & Make-up - Kathrin Hieselmayr
Sound - Katharina Voß
Sound design & Soundtrack - Wibke Tiarks
Sound Mix - Kostas Flylaktidis
Colour Grading - Julian Moser
Motion Capture - OnPoint Studios
Animation - Diana Gradinaru
Production - Blaise Kirschner
Production Assistant - Lena Weißmüller
Commissioned and co-produced by Fluentum
Curators: Junia Thiede and Dennis Brzek
